Barring a major surprise, Bermuda will have a new premier in a few weeks’ time.

David Burt will step down at the Progressive Labour Party’s annual conference at the end of October and the governing party will elect a new leader, who will consequently become premier.

Jason Hayward, the Minister of Economy and Labour, and Curtis Dickinson, the former finance minister, are vying for the role.

More or less since its inception, the PLP has chosen its leaders by having its members elect delegates who in turn vote for the leader. There is not the space here to debate the different methods of electing a party leader in a parliamentary democracy.

Suffice to say, the system, regardless of whether the leader is elected by MPs, delegates or the party membership as a whole, means that the island ends up with a premier who has not been chosen through a general election or by popular vote.

Despite that, the choice of leader has ramifications for the whole island. It is not, as has been claimed, an internal matter for the PLP. It affects everyone.

For that reason, even though the PLP’s delegates will ultimately choose the premier, it makes sense, at the very least, for the election campaign to be held in public.

There are two reasons for this. First, the public have the right to know who will be leading the country and making decisions on their behalf. In the absence of a general election, this is the least voters deserve.

The second is that it tests the candidates on the same broad canvas that they will be working on if they are successful. If they perform poorly on this stage, they will perform poorly as premier. The members and delegates of the PLP need to see this to make an informed decision.

However, this is not how the election campaign has unfolded. To his credit, Mr Dickinson has held a number of public meetings which have been well attended. Mr Hayward has been more circumspect, by and large holding meetings with PLP branches, with the doors firmly closed to the wider public.

The bottom line is this: the decision to choose a new leader should be held in the open. The public deserve no less.