Why I believe the UBP should be disbanded
“As the first female chairperson I went into the job anticipating some flak,” she says. “The first of anything is pioneering. I looked on it as (being) a pioneer, as a trailblazer paving the way for other women behind me. I fought the fight. But I did wonder ‘why am I being talked to with such condescension?’”
As time went by, Ms Rawlins began to sense that sexism wasn’t the only factor working against her and that a pervasive racism — from party members whom she won’t publicly name — played a part.
“They would like to think they are not a party that’s run by white elites and that they are interested in the people of this country,” she says. “I think they have to deal with their perception problems.
“People’s perception is that if the UBP gets back into power tomorrow we would see the white aristocracy came back so fast it would make your head spin.
“That’s not my thoughts; that’s what I hear. Blacks now are hesitant to vote for the party because they believe that they are only being used for their vote and that the United Bermuda Party is not really interested in the progress of black people.
“They believe that a leopard can’t change its spots. Having been on the inside and having had a taste of the arrogance that existed long ago and that still exists now and the white supremacist attitude I would have to say again that they are a long way away from making people believe that they have changed. They have not changed.”
Harsh words, perhaps, from a woman who was a cheerleader for the UBP for the past nine years. But Ms Rawlins, who tried unsuccessfully to become an Opposition Senator three times, was badly burnt by her experiences in the party and is clearly still smarting almost three months after her very public resignation.
She says she’s happy and confident again now after a “very hurtful experience” but she admits: “I felt very aggrieved. I felt like I had been forced out. I felt I didn’t get a chance to do what I could have done. I don’t believe that I will be a part of the United Bermuda Party again. That’s their loss, definitely.”
She says it’s taken until now for her to feel ready to tell her story. “I had made up my mind after leaving that I was totally out of politics,” says the 58-year-old. “It’s not that I wasn’t interested in what was going on but I really needed to step back. I really didn’t have anything to say all these months.”
Now — having witnessed the resignation of party leader Wayne Furbert last week — she’s ready to talk. She is highly critical of him and the way he treated her, though he refutes her claim that he turned his back on her and other supporters.
She says he failed to take seriously complaints about racism in the party from her and former Shadow Minister Jamahl Simmons.
“I did see Wayne as a friend,” she says. “I think that’s where most of my hurt came from leading up to when I stepped down. He just totally put us down. He kicked us to the kerb.”
She adds: “Whether or not he was the author of his own undoing is left to anybody and everybody’s opinion. Wayne acts from his heart and that, in and of itself, is not wrong but when it comes to politics, as he himself so very often told me, you have to think things through.
“He just sort of shrugged it off. I believe if he had led with a bit more strength things might be different. I personally feel that he is a little uncomfortable with confronting. Good leaders need to be stronger than that.”
She claims he was stabbed in the back by colleagues after being allowed to “shamble and bumble” along in the top job. “I know he’s hurting right now,” she says. “He was probably viewed as the best person to replace Grant Gibbons at the time. The whole idea of getting another leader or a black leader was because they thought that would produce the votes they needed to win the next election.̶B>She doesn’t think Michael Dunkley, the man tipped to become party leader tonight, has the crossover appeal to win an election. “If Michael Dunkley succeeds in becoming the leader then they might as well have left Grant there because Grant is by far superior in terms of political savvy, experience and political know-how.
“Michael doesn’t have the appeal that is required of the party leader to lead the country. I don’t think he’ll get the votes. He’s very comfortable with ordering people around like soldiers. As a leader of the country you can’t rule that way.
“It’s one thing to have a Type A personality but it’s the way in which he handles people. Within the realms of the party it may be okay because he’s talking to his colleagues. Whether or not the same behaviour will be accepted by the electorate is another thing again. I say that it will not be.”
She’s equally unimpressed with probable deputy leader Patricia Gordon-Pamplin. “I think Patricia is a very bright, very articulate woman, able to reason well, able to debate well and did an excellent job with this last budget reply. But I do not believe that the majority of the electorate want to continue in a combative or confrontational mode when it comes to politics. I think that Patricia Gordon-Pamplin can be confrontational and very combative in her language and in her behaviour.”
Ms Rawlins believes her former party is now unelectable, and is unrepentant about the fact that her allegations about it may have contributed to that.
“It was time for the mask to come off,” she says. “The UBP can’t continue to fool the people into thinking that they have changed because they haven’t. I have no regard for the UBP. They are all about power and if they want to be back in power for the sake of being in power then they don’t deserve to be.”Ms Rawlins is now so opposed to her former party that she believes it should fold altogether. Simply trying to change its image, she says, would just be like “bleaching a leopard”. “The nature of the leopard is the same. I would like to see the old United Bermuda Party totally disappear and take its nature with it. I would like to see the whole thing pulled down and started again from the ground up, I really would.
“Maybe in the demolition of the party the perception will be gone and those old whites in the party who seemingly are running the party would be gone too.”
Frustratingly, she still won’t identify the alleged racists whom she says mistreated her, though she insists her resignation speech to the party’s central executive did name names.
“I don’t need to release it (the speech) to validate my decision to leave,” she says. “I don’t think it’s the right time.”
Suggestions by some that her resignation and subsequent criticism of the party stem from her failed attempts to become a Senator or be given a safe election seat anger her.
“I came to the table with a lot of credibility and I left with a high credibility,” she says. “I spoke what I felt. I refused to do anything that would compromise my integrity. That perhaps was my downfall. I would not play the game. I believe that those powers that be probably felt that I would just play ball. What they didn’t bargain for was my strength and resolve.”
She can’t say right now if she’ll ever return to politics, though she’s pleased to see the emergence of a third party, the All Bermuda Congress.
“I believe I’m called to community service,” says the deeply religious mother-of-one, who is a licensed minister for the New Creation Worship Centre. “Whether or not politics is a part of that, I don’t know.”
