BECAUSE Bermudians' memories tend to be shorter than Ren?e Webb's notorious fuse, I decided to look up what the Progressive Labour Party actually said prior to their victory in 1998. Having done so, my advice to your readers who intend to vote in the upcoming election is that they should do so based on what the PLP have done during the last four-and-a-half years - not what they said they would do.

We were promised an accountable Government that would operate in the "sunshine of public scrutiny" (not to mention one that promised Bermudians everything under the sun); we got a pernicious doctrine of secrecy and the regular and significant censorship-by-omission of important facts - involving issues ranging from the secret constitutional rewrite to Ren?e Webb's current attempt to suppress tourism arrival figures. Even the election was called, it seems, to at least temporarily suppress the Auditor General's findings for the financial year 2001/2002 - a period covering the looting of the Bermuda Housing Corporation funds and the out-of-control spending at the site of the new Berkeley Institute. If there's nothing damaging in the Auditor General's report, as the Premier says (although she also claims not to have read it: go figure), why doesn't she just release the document, end all of the damaging speculation, clear the air?

We were promised the elimination of crime - Alex Scott said that under a PLP Government the social frictions that produce criminality would completely disappear; what we got was an increase in crimes of barbarous savagery - young men shot to death while sitting in cars or disembowelled while ordering hamburgers at take-out joints, old ladies left comatose after being mugged outside post offices, deaf children bike-jacked in broad daylight on South Shore Road. There has been an unprecedented spike in what is wrongly called black-on-black violence since the PLP came to power (it's violence, plain and simple). So much for removing the social frictions that produce crime. Do feel safer? Do your wives and daughters feel safer in this Alex-in-Wonderland version of a crime-free "New Bermuda"?

We were promised a revival of tourism; what we got was this Government presiding over the most catastrophic decline in visitor arrivals in Bermuda's history along with an unparalleled loss of hotel beds. Instead of working at resuscitating our tourism industry, the Premier and her Cabinet Ministers played at being tourists - jetting off to flirt with the Communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro in Cuba and attempting to tow Bermuda closer to the West Indies. If joining the Caribbean Community is so very important, why does this month's Bermuda Tourism Department ad in begin with the words: "Come to Bermuda, it has the charms and manners of the British"? Oh, really? If the Minister of Tourism - who this week said she deserved a place in (she does but not in the category she thinks) - has so many brilliant ideas, why is she reduced to stealing photos of Hawaii to promote the island? Why is she employing fatuous, incendiary rhetoric against the US Consul General in Bermuda who is giving Bermuda sensible advice vis-a-vis its Cuban courtship - simply stating Washington's policy regarding this perennial battle-fatigued thorn in America's side.

The US is trying to identify its friends in a world turned upside down since September 11. France is now discovering this. American participation in the French air show and the Cannes Film Festival were minimal this year; there are ongoing US boycotts against French products and US tourism to that country has dropped substantially in recent months.

Ignoring the very real risks involved, the Bermuda Government has gone into "Mouse That Roared" mode - squeaking trendy but meaningless anti-American defiance at Washington for its Cuban and Iraq policies (Transport Minister Ewart Brown, while addressing an anti-war rally, cracked wise about the US President's alleged intellectual shortcomings; funny thing is George W. Bush has degrees from both Harvard and Yale - unlike Dr. Brown's Premier who pretends that a four-week summer school session at the John F. Kennedy School of Government makes her a Harvard graduate and who appends the letters of meaningless honorary doctorates after her name in a bid to artificially add some gravitas she does not, in fact, possess).

Suppose the US, angered by these repeated barbs, were to decide to cancel the pre-Customs clearance Bermuda residents now enjoy before visiting the US? Suppose visa restrictions were reimposed? Suppose the tax exemptions Bermuda enjoys as a result of the US/Bermuda Tax Treaty were rescinded? Suppose the so-called Bermuda loophole in the US tax code were closed, as many Congressmen and powerful lobbyists would like. Bermuda would go out of business overnight.

What, might I ask, is the PLP's fall-back position? Have they commissioned Agriculture & Fisheries to do a study of how many people the golf courses could feed if they were ploughed up and used for planting potatoes and onions? Have they done a similar study to see if our fish stocks have replenished to the point where we could feed ourselves by fishing (the PLP, as I recall, vociferously opposed the introduction of a fish pot ban in 1990 despite the fact our resources were depleted to the point of virtual non-existence)?

Yet such genuine considerations don't seem to factor into the scenario that Jennifer Smith has plotted for her "New" Bermuda. Instead, she has transformed the island into an open-air 21-square-mile amphitheatre where her tragi-comic political answer to a play from the Theatre of the Absurd runs night and day. She has even taken her Absurdist comic operetta on the road. Remember the dubious impact that sending conga lines of gombeys to Davos for a conference of the world's leading political, financial and business leaders had? It was an embarrassment for Bermuda. This is your tax dollar at work under a PLP Government! Apart from any unintentional humour value, this display and similar ones are costing Bermuda prestige and influence internationally. Despite Bermuda's small size we used to be taken seriously on the world stage because, by and large, we were represented by serious people. Not any more, folks.

What we were not promised - but got - in the "New" Bermuda was croneyism, nepotism and outright political gangsterism on a scale hitherto unknown and on this island. Did the United Bermuda Party, whatever its sins, engage in wholesale theft from the public purse? The PLP has had almost five years to study the records of past UBP Governments; if they had come across any evidence of such widescale corruption, you know the documents in question would have been leaked to the press by now.

We were not promised an endless list of party hacks who were rewarded for their services to Alaska Hall (not Bermuda) with taxpayer-subsidised jobs and consultancy positions (what, by the way, did Roosevelt Brown actuallyto earn his sinecure?)

We were not promised either the dead silence about confidence-shaking scandals or the stubborn defence of the slippery beneficiaries of the people's money. The PLP likes to style itself as a socialist party; well, the only redistribution of wealth I've seen going on has been from theto the friends of this Premier; wish had a paint brush that could generate as many dollars as Paul Young's. But then I'd also need a wife like Dale Place Young, the Premier's boon companion and a PLP factotum.

We were also not promised Cabinet Ministers who would plunder the coffers for ostentatious limousines, huge amounts of unneccessary travel (the Pope does not globe-trot as much as some PLP Ministers).

Instead of the promised and long overdue accountability, we have had continued surreptitious fiddling with the Bermuda Constitution, the continuing suppression of the special Auditor's Report into the Bermuda Housing Corporation scandal, secret diplomatic initiatives with Communist Cuba; instead of the PLP presenting a united front to the public, we have had repeated challenges to the Premier's leadership (suggesting that at least some PLP MPs realise just how dangerous and destabilising her agenda, in fact, is); instead of stability, we have had confusion; instead of firing disgraced Cabinet Ministers, we have had half-baked Cabinet shuffles that leave discredited people like Nelson Bascome in place.

If the PLP are re-elected, we can expect more of the same madness because they will have a clear mandate to do whatever they like. They already behave like they own the Government instead of realising they are caretakers who, in fact, work for the people.

In 1998, like any political party winning an election, the PLP began popping the champagne corks. Almost five years later, they are still popping. The partying and celebrating has never ceased. And the taxpayer is expected to foot the bill for this five-year Bacchanal. Can we afford another five years of such self-congratulatory, self-satisfied and self-serving behaviour by an insulated PLP leadership?

The Bermuda Government is meant to be run along democratic principles, unlike Alaska Hall where a small, authoritarian clique at the top dictates to the PLP foot soldiers - who are not meant to think or act by themselves.

But Jennifer Smith has applied the Alaska Hall strictures to her Government management style. As a result, independent thinkers like Dale Butler have been unable to make any contribution to Government policy or programmes at all since 1998. Mr. Butler was parked on the backbenches at the beginning of the PLP's first term and he will doubtless remain there throughout a second PLP term unless the ridiculous Premier and her cronies are ever removed.

Mr. Butler's bright, he's able and he's not a yes man; hence he can be of no service whatsoever to a Premier who fills her Cabinet with the likes of Nelson (Bermuda Housing Corporation) Bascome and the sullen, caustic and unelected - and quite possibly unelectable - David Burch, who despite all the shrill noise he makes about cleaning up his predecessor's epic mess has yet to reclaim a single penny squandered by the BHC on its golden paint brushes. Mr. Burch has accomplished nothing and in reality is little more than a glorified lady-in-waiting to this Premier.

Along with Mr. Butler, such sound, capable and sensible MPs as Wayne Perinchief, El James and retiring MP Reginald Burrows, all of whom could have made genuine contributions to Bermuda and Bermudians under the PLP Government, were all exiled by this Premier.

Instead, someone like Ren?e Webb - whose increasingly unhinged rhetoric suggests that beneath her placid surface she is in a permanent state of rage - is given two important Cabinet portfolios. Is there such a paucity of talent among the PLP backbenches? No, of course not. But the Premier clearly is only comfortable, to paraphrase Ms Webb's own comment, with people who think like her.

The Sphinx-like Premier has sequestered herself at the Cabinet Office since 1998, emerging only occasionally to make a public spectacle of herself at events like last year's Cup Match trophy presentation and the Smithsonian event in Washington, DC (where her behaviour was so outrageous an American official on hand only half-jokingly suggested she be put on permanent display in that famous institution alongside Bill Clinton and Teddy Kennedy in an exhibit of badly behaved politicians).

In the run-up to the 1998 General Election Jennifer Smith said she was going to be the "Education Premier". That lasted about 20 minutes. Since then the Education portfolio has been tossed around Cabinet like a hot potato nobody wants to hold onto for very long; the only person it hasn't been thrown at - who actually might have made a significant difference in public education - is, of course, Dale Butler.

The Premier then, of course, took over responsibility for Public Information. Well, we've all seen how very narrowly she interprets this Cabinet responsibility - suppressing information, refusing to talk to the Press or the public, making herself completely inaccessible except to visiting witch doctors. Even Bermuda Industrial Union president and PLP backbencher Derrick Burgess has openly complained that he could not get through to her - and he is, on paper at least, one of her most powerful allies. If the Premier can turn a deaf ear to a PLP MP who is also the leader of the island's largest trade union, then Colonel Burch must be right - the inner circle of the PLP really doesn't care what thinks!

While Dame Lois Browne Evans, the spiritual godmother of the PLP who, by her own admission, remains a doctrinaire socialist, has announced she will not be seeking re-election on July 24. Although retiring, she said she will continue to "give advice and help out" if the PLP is re-elected. If her advice and help - as seems likely - is in large measure responsible for shaping the current Government's arrogant posturing, I hate to imagine what ideas she will start feeding into the ear of her prot?g?e Jennifer Smith if the PLP wins a second consecutive term.

Independence based on a voice vote of MPs in the House of Assembly now that the British have allowed this curious precedent for major constitutional amendments? Nationalising the off-shore sector so there will be common ownership of the means of production? Turning the Bacardi Building over to Castro for use as the Cuban embassy in Bermuda?

Does all of this sound fanciful?

Well, 18 months ago the idea that this Government was presiding over the plundering of the BHC accounts would have sounded equally far-fetched. Three years ago so would the notion that whole sections of the Bermuda Constitution were about to be junked after the Premier had denied any such plans were in the works. And four years ago the idea that the self-styled "People's" Premier would have turned her back on the peopleand done all of this damage - rather than doing what she said she was going to do - would have seemed well-nigh impossible.