LTHOUGH not on the agenda of last week's press conference, Premier Alex Scott seized the opportunity to tell the island's media that 2006 "is going to see the beginning of discussions on Independence".

Flanked by a number of Ministers, Mr. Scott went on to tell a Cabinet room packed with reporters: "We spent last year allowing the Bermuda Independence Commission to get the facts but we really haven't embarked on that full-blooded discussion.

"We invite all of Bermuda to join in. I am not going to railroad folks into Independence or sovereignty, I'm trying to encourage us to understand a subject that the rest of the world is prepared to talk about."

But while the rest of the world might be willing to talk about Independence, Bermuda, it would appear, is not. If the Premier was hoping for his rallying cry to be splashed across the front pages of the island's newspapers the following morning, he was in for a disappointment. His comments didn't garner a single column inch.

Perhaps one reason for the lack of coverage was that this was not the first time Mr. Scott has called for a debate on the issue.

Although always a central plank in the Progressive Labour Party's manifesto, the subject was sidelined by former Premier Jennifer Smith during the party's first term of office.

But shortly after his elevation to the Premiership following the PLP's second election victory in the summer of 2003, Mr. Scott made his intentions clear ? Independence was now on the front burner.

He might have been prompted by United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan who, at the beginning of 2004, called for Bermuda and 15 other territories to be decolonised by the end of the decade. A row with Government House over the appointment of a new Chief Justice ? in which Mr. Scott was overruled by Governor John Vereker ? no doubt intensified the Premier's resolve.

At the PLP's annual Founders' Day Luncheon in February 2004, Premier Scott said it was time for people to think sensibly about whether it would be good for the country to sever links with Britain.

But since then any attempt to publicly discuss the positives and negatives of Independence has always been hijacked by what Mr. Scott believes is a side issue ? the method by which a decision on Independence will be made.

The debate became bogged down by the issue of mechanics before it had even began,

A week after his call, Mr. Scott undermined his party's formerly rock solid position ? that Independence should be decided by way of a General Election ? by saying that Government would now be guided by the will of the people.

"Yes, the PLP has obviously for many years held the position that the way to identify the popular support for a move to sovereignty and Independence is via a General Election," he told .

"But what we are doing is opening up the whole discussion about Independence to the public and we are going to listen very closely so our position, long held, is going to be looked at in the context of what Bermuda and Bermudians are saying. So while that is our position now, who knows what it might be in the future."

That vague stance was immediately pounced on by the Opposition, which claimed it was essential to outline a framework in which the debate process could take place. "The United Bermuda Party believes we should not begin to debate the substantial issues of Independence unless the process has been clearly defined and agreed," then-Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons wrote in .

"It is up to any Government to prove that they are worthy of the people's trust. The best way for the PLP Government to do this is to commit now, before we begin to examine the pros and cons, to an unambiguous statement of how the issue of Independence will be resolved."

The non-debate crashed into a second hurdle a month later when an e-mail urging voters to write to Whitehall demanding a referendum was widely circulated and widely publicised. Mr. Scott eventually responded by claiming that the referendum / General Election question was "putting the cart before the horse".

October 2004 the Association of Bermuda International Companies accepted the Premier's invitation to join the Independence debate ? by claiming that such an emotional issue should be decided by way of a referendum. Once again Mr. Scott was handed a diversionary headache concerning method, rather than a constructive argument for or against Independence.

Leading international experts jumped on the bandwagon. Gary Sussman, director of Research and Programme Development at Tel Aviv University's Hartog School of Government Policy, told the : "It is increasingly and widely believed that there should be a referendum on issues of sovereignty by what is known as the logic of appropriateness ? that it is the right thing to do."

And a UN spokeswoman said that any vote on Independence should be "a clear expression of the will of the people", suggesting Britain was under pressure to insist the issue be decided through a referendum.

While the debate on the consequences of Independence stalled, the row over how the decision should be made snowballed. It caught the imagination of the public who flooded the Letters to the Editor pages with their views. Newspaper columnists used up gallons of ink on the issue while those who supported Government's position found themselves sidetracked into an argument they didn't want to have and didn't think was necessary.

Aeditorial at the end of the year summed up the situation.

"Far from the spirited debate on Independence that Premier Alex Scott wanted, there's been little more that a phoney war on the issue so far.

"Government must take some of the blame for this. Aside from picking a couple of fights with Government House and encouraging another British Overseas Territory to seek sovereignty, Government has done nothing to encourage debate. Even now, Mr. Scott is promising that he will form a Bermuda Independence Commission to assist Government to put together information on the issue. Apparently the committee set up under the chairmanship of Deputy Premier Ewart Brown just hasn't had the time to do it".

The Commission began its work in January and was given six months to compile information "to educate, inform and encourage discussion and debate on the subject of Independence for Bermuda".

But if the Premier believed the Independence debate could be discreetly shelved until the summer and then revived on a different footing, he was mistaken. Throughout the first half of the year the issue repeatedly grabbed the headlines ? and it was the mechanism question that was always being debated.

In January a pressure group was formed demanding that a referendum on Independence should be held. Bermudians For Referendum, which claimed it was not affiliated to any political party and was not for or against sovereignty, eventually collected more than 14,000 signatures supporting its stance.

In February there was more bad news for the Premier. Polls suggested that support for Independence was slipping while backing for a referendum on the issue was surging forward.

In the same month Barbados announced that it would be using the referendum approach to decide whether or not to keep the Queen as head of state. A week later the British Government, which has the final say on how the decision should be made, confirmed its preference for a referendum.

"The move to Independence is a fundamental step," then-Overseas Minister Bill Rammell said.

"Increasingly in the UK, major constitutional issues of this kind are being put to a referendum. At this time, the presumption of the UK Government is that a referendum would be the way of testing opinion in those territories where Independence is an option."

In August the Premier added fuel to the fire after accusing the Governor of having his speeches written by somebody "right of Attila the Hun". The Premier went on the attack after Sir John, in a speech two months earlier, reiterated the UK's preference for a referendum.

The BIC report was finally presented to the public in September. Commission chairman Bishop Vernon Lambe said he hoped the report would "serve as a light to the path of the future" while Independence advocate and political analyst Walton Brown claimed the document would at last spark an informed debate on the issue.

It did neither. Instead, questions were raised over the objectivity and competence of commissioners, and again, the mechanism issue was central to the controversy.

Firstly, the BIC omitted the UBP's submission, which took no position for or against Independence but did once again raise the issue of method, calling for a referendum. The BIC explained that, because the question of mechanism was not in its mandate, the Opposition submission was irrelevant.

if the mechanism question was not part of its mandate, why did the Commission then address the question in its final report with a totally erroneous statement ? that it could find no example of any territory deciding the question of Independence by way of a referendum? Although several commissioners later tried to dismiss that howler as a minor editorial mix-up, the BIC's credibility was severely damaged. The report, instead of being widely read, was widely ridiculed.

The Premier was the architect of yet another high-profile referendum row just days after the BIC report was released.

Presented with a petition by pressure group Bermudians For Referendum, Mr. Scott managed to insult the petition's 14,008 supporters in a single flippant remark ? "Folks signed it and didn't even know what they were signing". The event was promoted from back-page photo caption to front-page banner headline.

The referendum issue has been at the centre of the Independence debate in the last four months after Mr. Scott sought Whitehall's permission for Bermuda to develop a "unique" path towards sovereignty ? to hold both a referendum and a General Election at the same time.

At last week's press conference the Premier reiterated Government's shifting position.

"We have been able to sit with the UK Government, with the Minister involved, and he has put the option before us that we can in Bermuda come up with a unique solution for the way forward when we arrive at that point of taking a decision," he said.

"We can have a General Election which can either be followed by a plebiscite, a referendum on the day or we can have a plebiscite, a referendum one year hence or thereabouts, it will be for Bermuda to decide. That's what will be one of the options folded into the discussions we are going to have in 2006."

The new initiative suggests the Premier now realises he must soften his position if he is to get the real debate on Independence back on track. Whether his "unique solution" is enough to quieten pro-referendum hard-liners remains to be seen.