Dear Sir,

If there is one thing we can take from the story of great lives it is that while their lives can be brief encounters, the principles they lived by are enduring, the valour of their stands has the eternal power to reach into the lives of succeeding generations and bring sparks of light to continue the momentum of a better world.

I became intrigued by our leaders, enough to want to know some of what propelled them ideologically. For example, I once heard Quinton Edness proudly declare himself as a royalist. In other words, he was not an unwitting or unwilling servant of the Queen.

Now before the leftists or neocolonialists begin to chime some cynicism about him, Dame Lois Browne-Evans, who was the Leader of the Opposition for a few decades, often made the comment: “People criticise the Westminster system, but they don’t know what to replace it with.”

I should add she never in her life tried to alter it.

Then there are the dear hearts of persons such as John Barritt, who wants to tinker with the system to bring some reform. Problem is, him wanting to make a beef stew, but without fixed-term elections, the base is pork and with the current party constructs, with six- or eight-person candidate-selection committees, followed by small branch selections, means the stock is pork. Every now and then you find a healthy piece of pork fat float through in a process that denies citizens right of participation.

All due respects to the Queen and with nothing personal intended. The paradigm of “God save our gracious Queen, long may she reign o’er us” is not just some simple slogan for national unity, it is in truth a clear repudiation of one’s own value to the system of governance and one’s own right, along with that of everyone else, to share in the rule and obligations of this universe.

Tradition is powerful and none can deny the value and strength of the British. Yet Britain is a new and evolving society and its own pressures to ascertain an egalitarian world will not be forever withheld.

Until we begin with the principle of all persons being equal and entitled to certain inalienable rights, we are accomplishing nothing. It’s when we design the system that lays an equal burden on everyone for the governance of the universe that we begin on the right course.

Following the myth of labour or the notion of being better under the established order are equally illusive. All systems which do not value the sanctity of the human spirit are tyrannies. We can fix the economy as we fix our political lives.

No need to sacrifice our dignity using the economy as an excuse. The issue is not fixing the Progressive Labour Party or justifying a One Bermuda Alliance, it’s bigger and time to look at a fresh start.

KHALID WASI