Ministerial problems

June 7, 2009

Dear Sir,

The ever-expanding role of Government in every country makes the responsibility for running a country an exceedingly difficult and complex job. The work is carried out by Government employees who are organised into departments each of which is staffed by full time trained professionals with expertise in that department’s area of operation. In democracies which are run under the Westminster system each department is the responsibility of a Cabinet Minister whose job it is to explain the policies of the department and to get Parliament to agree funds required for its operation.

In Bermuda there are some 90 Government departments employing some 5,000 persons. Government is by far the biggest employer in Bermuda. Ministers are selected from Members of Parliament, which means they must be politicians, which in turn means that they have spent much of their life learning to talk pleasingly about themselves to their voters and the media. The ability to do this is often their only skill and they are not qualified or knowledgeable about how to run a country. It is important for Ministers to work with the staff in the Departments for which they have a responsibility and not to argue with or dictate to them.

One of the most serious weaknesses in the operation of Bermuda’s Government arises because Ministers do not understand what their function is under our Westminster system. Currently there are 11 Ministers and a few examples of the problems to which this lack of understanding gives rise are as follows:

1. The Premier, as Minister of Tourism, sees fit to travel to Delhi and Beijing and Moscow and other exotic places not mentioning numerous trips to the US, the Caribbean and elsewhere. It is reputed that he travels first class with an entourage including bodyguards and has limousines and stays in the best hotels at a cost of some $5,000 per night. During his tenure as Minister tourism has declined.

2. The Finance Minister is meant to be the guardian of our economy and as such should make an informed estimate each year as to how much the economy can afford and make sure expenditure does not exceed that amount. Instead she lists all the wishes of various Ministers and looks on her job being nothing other than to raise whatever cash they want. This she does by targeting Exempted Companies for taxes and by borrowing from banks. In the past eight years our debt has gone from $119,500,000 to $1,101,500,000 during which time Government revenue from other sources has been in decline.

3. The Immigration Minister has seen fit illegally and furtively in the dead of night to sneak four Islamic terrorist suspects who do not speak English into our island and to provide them, at taxpayers’ expense, with homes and jobs.

4. Our Development and Planning Act 1974 makes provision for the Minister to grant Special Development Orders when emergency or unexpected circumstances make this necessary. The Minister of Planning has repeatedly abused this power by overruling all the Planning Department professionals and granting Special Development Orders, which enable inappropriate developments to take place such as the ten-storey building on East Broadway.

5. Our Constitution makes provision for the appointment of a legally qualified Member of Parliament to the office of Attorney General who thereby becomes a Cabinet Minister and the principle legal adviser to the Government. The title Attorney General is in the Constitution and is well known throughout Westminster based governments but our Government has given the incumbent the title of Minister of Justice giving rise to the Judiciary being treated as being under the same executive control as other Government departments. Constitutionally the judiciary is on an equal level with the executive and any suggestion that the judiciary is subject to executive control is wrong.

6. The behaviour of the Premier in particular but also the other Ministers both individually and collectively in Parliament is unacceptable. Respect and elementary good manners towards fellow members is basic regardless of personality and political differences and the contempt shown by Ministers towards not only Opposition Members but even their own backbenchers is bringing the institution of Parliament itself into contempt.

One can go on with many other examples of problems arising from the way Ministers deal with the challenges facing Bermuda but the above-mentioned items make the point. They have done things they ought not to have done and left undone things they ought to have done.

Of the items mentioned the most worrying is the financial situation. In the last eight years the Government has borrowed and spent $982,000,000 and one wonders where it has gone. There have been highly questionable developments such as a dock and a golf course in the West End but these do not account for the amount spent. Meanwhile little or nothing has been done about other pressing needs such as the judiciary, the hospital, the Causeway and the airport. Our economy is based on international business which requires political stability. Nothing threatens political stability more than national debt.

The consequences of ongoing ministerial incompetence are serious and our only hope is that either the current Ministers improve or that they be replaced.

WILLIAM M. COX

Devonshire

Fight against the draft

May 29, 2010

Dear Sir,

In his 6th Century BC text, “The Art of War”, Chinese military general and strategist Sun Tzu writes: “Subduing the other’s military without battle is the most skilful.” In many ways, The Bermudians against the Draft (BAD) appeal to the UK Privy Council was also lost before it even begun. In considering the case of BAD, the UK Privy Council Judicial Committee allowed the certification of a sole concern for determination: “Can the Government of Bermuda lawfully enforce compulsory military service against the appellants?” The answer, of course, is and was always going to be “yes”.

I can say that with assurance because the 1965 Bermuda Defence Act clearly enshrines in law the legal right of the Governor of Bermuda “for the raising or maintenance of the Bermuda Regiment by means of compulsory military service”. The act also clearly states that this conscription is open to anyone, male or female, between the ages of 18 and 23 years of age, who is included on the military training register and that to refuse this conscription may result in prosecution. However, as history has shown us, laws are not always just or equitable.

To understand the dilemma faced by BAD, and indeed all other Bermudian males who choose to fight against conscription, one must examine the history of the military presence in Bermuda and its purpose. The evolution of the Bermuda Regiment into its current context is a lengthy one. At its heart, in my opinion, the primary purpose of the military presence in Bermuda has, and will be until Bermuda is independent, the defence of the British Empire and its assets.

Bermuda’s current Regiment was created from the 1965 amalgamation of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, an all-white unit, and the Bermuda Militia Artillery, an all-black unit, but whose commanding officers were also white. Both units were put in service during the First and Second World Wars, with service being on a voluntary basis for the most part, however with conscription being held during the Second World War and after 1950.

These units served in miscellaneous roles according to British need at the time, with their post-war purpose primarily as a north Atlantic British military presence, in particular the Royal Naval Dockyard. Remember that those were the days of the so-called Cold War and the use of submarines and other naval equipment were an important part of the military presence of the world’s superpowers during that time.

Bermuda still stands as one of the few remaining colonies of the 21st century, and although one cannot be anything but proud of both the black and white Bermudian military men and women that have served over the years, a frank characterisation of the context of this service would be obviously described as service in pursuit of British imperial interests. The Bermuda Regiment, and its formative legislation, the 1965 Bermuda Defence Act, is a remnant of this imperial, colonial era; a time warp Bermuda still finds its national identity still bound by today. It is representative of a bygone era that also led to incidences like the 1982 Falklands War, whereby British imperial interests clashed with an Argentine assertion of sovereignty over the disputed Falkland Islands.

I firmly believe the BAD group needs to be commended. There are few true and major causes of justice left fighting for in our increasing acceptance of a globalised society, with deceptively globalised, but essentially inequitable, rules. Bermuda’s draft system is one of those causes and represents an obvious denial of human rights. It is a subtle form of “forced labour”, in which one must not only serve but endure servitude for an empire that continues to subject. As a young, male, black Bermudian who recognises the historically racist and colonial context by which many of Bermuda’s laws were written, including the 1965 Bermuda Defence Act and the 1968 constitution, I applaud and support the cause of BAD. I too was a conscientious objector to forced military service under the Bermuda Regiment. This group of ordinary Bermudian men have sought to stand up and say “no” to a global superpower and a remnant of a 400-year old colonial system.

BAD’s struggle is not a selfish one; it is a struggle that seeks to not only increase true freedom for every future Bermudian but also to win one more battles against that poisonous philosophy of holding one people inferior to another. Which one of us has the right to demand servitude of another? In his fight for freedom, equality and justice, Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” How far BAD, and ultimately the Bermuda people, are willing to go with their fight for equality and justice only time will tell.

DAVID CHAPMAN

London, UK

Danger of rubber ducks

June 7, 2010

Dear Sir,

As Bermudians join the rest of the world in marking the United Nations’ World Oceans Day this week, it struck me as disturbingly ironic that Monday’s front-page photo portrayed hundreds of plastic ducks bobbing in St. George’s Harbour.

Not to be a party-pooper on a charity event, but as our tiny, mid-ocean society strives to become more environmentally aware, surely the celebration of copious amounts of vinyl plastic in the sea has become an outdated-and dangerous-message for charities and their corporate sponsors to be sending out (even if all the duckies in this case were collected afterwards).

Plastic debris is perhaps one of the greatest long-term threats to all the world’s oceans, one whose ruinous impact our children, and their children, will be left to suffer. As a country whose heritage has been so dependent on the sea, we owe it to ourselves to get better informed about the problem, and learn greener ways to capture the public imagination.

ROSEMARY JONES

Paget