FROM Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia: In the field of political science, social engineering is a mainly pejorative term used to describe the intended effects of authoritarian systems of government. The implication is that some governments, or private groupings, are intending to change or "engineer" the citizenry, for example, by the use of propaganda or through the manipulation of culture ...

-The standard definition of the term returned by a Google on-line search ? a search the Premier recommended all Bermudians make to demonstrate his ten-year social engineering plan for Bermuda carries no negative connotations.

DESPITE ? or maybe in fact precisely because of ? his serial malapropisms, Aloysius (Lockjaw) Fox has emerged as the most insightful and popular moralist in Bermuda.

The logical back alley routes he takes to arrive at the truth actually get him there faster than the as-the-crow-flies paths followed by more clear-cut thinkers.

Lockjaw's tolerance for politicians is notoriously low. He has threatened during more than one election campaign to varnish the decks of his fishing boat with the contents of canvassing candidates' skulls.

Just the other day Lockjaw, a barrel-chested octogenarian St. David's Islander, was holding forth to his mate and stage partner Gavin Wilson on the relationship he had discovered between politicians and what he still quaintly calls "social diseases".

Lockjaw proclaimed that paranoia was the most dangerous social disease now confronting Bermuda. When told paranoia did not actually qualify as a social disease, Lockjaw would have none of it.

Since paranoia is contracted as a result of politicians screwing over their fellow man, he thundered, it bloody well a social disease, one that is highly contagious and can infect the entire society. At least that's the semi-polite version of what he said. And he is, of course, entirely correct.

Mounting public mistrust in the Bermuda Government's pronouncements and direction ? an ever-spiralling cycle of paranoia ? is perhaps unavoidable at this juncture.

This Premier, after all, espouses an ignore-the-elephant-in-the-living-room philosophy that only members of the Bermuda Society for the Blind could realistically be expected to adhere to.

He has asked Bermudians to overlook everything from Government complicity in looting Bermuda Housing Corporation accounts to, most recently, a historical record written in blood that violently underscores the fact that social engineering is a dead and entirely discredited system of conditioning a community. Any objective definition of the term demonstrates it to be an authoritarian leadership's blunt instrument that bludgeons the critical faculties of its citizenry into helpless submission. Bermuda's Premier, on the other hand, would have locals believe social engineering is either a value-neutral term or, indeed, a value-laden one.

When he announced his Ten Year Plan, a cross-Ministry initiative to re-engineer Bermudian society, to an audience of Caribbean leaders in London either the Premier himself did not fully understand the import of the term. Or, more likely, he understood it all too well ? and is now engaged in a one-man social engineering project of his own to persuade Bermudians via misinformation, omission and distortion that his elaborate but purposefully vague social agenda is placing the island on the road to Utopia rather than actually threatening its prospects as a going concern. Neither explanation is satisfactory although the second one would more closely dovetail with his inglorious track record in these matters.

When it comes to propaganda, this Premier is a longtime adept at this key aspect of social engineering. He has long since declared an open-ended campaign against objective truth using his spring-loaded mouth to sometimes devastating effect. His technique is a grab-bag of long discredited methods, manipulating the public's thinking through deception and confusion rather than persuasion and understanding.

Appeals to fear are among his favoured methods, attempting to split the community along racial lines for reasons of perceived political advantage ? for instance, his stereotyping of members of the Police Service as Klansmen, Skinheads and South African secret agents in an attempt to arouse fear, disgust and an electoral backlash among a target audience of voters. Scapegoating is another preferred weapon in his arsenal, deployed just last week in a none-too-convincing attempt to re-assign responsibility for the Berkeley Institute debacle from his own watch as Works Minister to the United Bermuda Party. Then there is his obsessive focus with generalities instead of specifics, a bluff-your-way-through technique in which he obstinately insists that even his most risible and fact-free suggestions are above mere factual refutation. This is precisely the technique he is now employing to defend his social engineering initiative.

It's also what he is utilising to promote another matter arising out of his London talks.

The Premier makes no secret of the fact he would like to see the question of Independence decided at a General Election rather than a referendum.

His preference is easily enough explained. The Premier believes he would more likely attain his goal through this mechanism (although given the change of a relative handful of votes last July, the PLP would have been summarily returned to the Opposition benches: so his thinking may not in fact hold true).

"Historically," said the Premier on returning from London, "every country that has gone Independent has done so through a General Election ... So history is on our side."

Not entirely surprisingly, it isn't.

Premier, with his Orwellian facility for rewriting the past to suit current political contingencies, has in fact willfully ignored 200 years of history.

Between 1866 and 1993, fully 240 national referenda were fought on the issue of sovereignty. Sovereignty referenda are not only the preferred method for ratifying a country's decision to move to Independence, they are in fact the standard mechanism.

In fact the first referenda ever held in the aftermath of the French Revolution were votes on national sovereignty. They were specifically organised around the concept of national self-determination and the idea that title to land could not be changed without the express consent of those living on that land. Sovereignty referenda are universally (except in Bermuda's Cabinet) adjudged to be the fairest and most transparent method of gaining public consent for an Independence initiative.

It's axiomatic that referenda are the purest form of direct democracy ? the same direct democracy the PLP allegedly champions. One issue, one man, one vote ? all votes of equal value.

But this tried and tested method of gaining the people's consent for Independence is not favoured here precisely because that consent is unlikely to be forthcoming.

In fact a negative referendum outcome is virtually preordained.

A former PLP Cabinet Minister is on record as saying half of the party's own supporters do not want Independence at this point ? suggesting a result almost identical to the 75 percent "No" vote recorded at the 1995 sovereignty plebiscite.

Because a referendum would isolate hard-line supporters of Independence while simultaneously exposing the generally low level of public support for such a move, the Premier is adamant about linking the question of Independence to continuing PLP rule at an election.

His strategy is to effectively mask this single most important step in Bermuda's political evolution behind a camouflage of slogans and appeals designed to foster lock-step racial nationalism (as in the "Don't-Go-Back-To-The-Plantation" election theme in 2003, which cheerfully contrived to misrepresent Bermudian history as a cross between Barbados' and ).

Rather than concede this all-too obvious point, the Premier instead goes into Dissembling Mode. Ignoring or dismissing the facts rather than addressing them, even his proven ability to better manage perception than reality comes up short when confronted with the accumulated evidence. In this instance, the facts ? all of the facts ? are inexorably ranged against him.

In the modern era, since the process of decolonisation got underway in the former British Empire in 1947, referenda have determined Newfoundland's decision to abandon its colonial status and join Canada; the 1956 decision by British Togoland to reject Independence and incorporate with Ghana; Jamaica's decision to walk away from West Indian federation and opt for Independence in 1961; Singapore's decisions to first join and then separate from the East Asian Federation in 1962 and 1965; Anguilla's choice to secede from its association with St. Kitts-Nevis in 1967; Gibraltar's wish to remain a British territory rather than incorporate into Spain in 1967. The list goes on.

In non-Commonwealth nations, referenda have been used in recent decades to determine questions of sovereignty in locales as very far removed from one another as Algeria and Mongolia, Latvia and East Timor, Quebec (twice) and New Caledonia.

As a means of determining Independence, referenda are almost always preferred to elections precisely because they remove this volatile issue from the hands of political extremists and place it directly in the hands of the people.

referenda are exercises in direct democracy, the legitimacy of the outcome is unsullied by partisan political party manoeuvrings of the very type Bermuda's Premier supports. And it should be remembered that Bermudians would be left with no choice at all on the matter if the UBP were to adopt a pro-Independence platform going into the type of election favoured by this Premier; the only thing to be decided would be which party takes Bermuda to Independence, notthe island should actually go Independent.

Certainly since the first Constitutional Conference to facilitate the island's political progress was convened in 1966, a referendum has been viewed as the most appropriate method for gauging the people's will on Independence. That has been, until very recently, the consensus of opinion between Bermuda's political parties and Whitehall.

From the time sovereignty was first seriously discussed as an option for Bermuda in talks between then Premier Sir Edward Richards and Governor Sir Richard Sharples in 1973, every Green and White Paper compiled on the subject has specifically sanctioned a referendum as the only realistic mechanism for gaining the popular mandate a Government would require to take the island Independent. Certainly Sir John Swan never considered putting the question of Independence to Bermudians other than through a plebiscite in 1995. Yet drawing on a combination of his customary scare tactics, scapegoating and bluff, the current Premier persists in his attempts to credit the incredible by continuing to argue for a General Election on Independence as opposed to a referendum. The Premier's position makes a nonsense of his claims to be championing the cause of national self-determination. How can he be when he refuses to entertain the notion of Bermudians actually determining whether or not they even want nationhood? His populist posturing simply cannot be reconciled with the demagogic realities of his position.

The Premier Without A Mandate is rapidly making himself known as the Premier Without A Clue when it comes to matters of popular sovereignty. The front man for radical elements within the PLP who view Independence as their political entitlement rather than the people's choice, he will doubtless continue to tailor his peculiar words and actions to suit his supporters' requirements.

In an age of a puppet Premier it's perhaps entirely fitting that the philosopher laureate of modern day Bermuda is Lockjaw Fox, another empty-headed mannequin who speaks words that someone else scripts, whose moves are coordinated by others.Only in Lockjaw's case, people know who is providing the voice. And what comes out of his mouth is reliably wise as well as being intentionally funny.