WITH attention increasingly being focused on an upcoming General Election and with pundits close to the Premier predicting a landslide victory for the Progressive Labour Party, the Opposition is asking what a lop-sided win for the incumbents will mean for the island.United Bermuda Party Senator Kim Swan yesterday pointed out that the PLP had “squandered” the windfall of seats it received at the 2003 election.

“The PLP won a disproportionate number of seats — 60 per cent of the total — when you consider it received a little over 51 per cent of a popular vote,” he said.

Sen. Swan said the real benefactors of this “lopsided majority” in the House of Assembly had been Cabinet Ministers, whom he accused of being careless about their responsibilities for the people’s welfare while travelling on taxpayer dollars with unprecedented frequency to the far corners of the world.

Cabinet had done little to justify its free-spending ways, Sen. Swan said, at least in terms of being effective on the job.

“Unfortunately, a lot of this disappointment (in Cabinet behaviour) has been made possible by the weakest Government backbench in the history of modern Bermuda politics,” he said.

“PLP backbenchers have been a dismal disappointment.

“They have failed abysmally to tie Government policy to the people’s interests and needs and failed to check the wayward behaviour of Cabinet Ministers.

“For example, their sheep-like approach on the Independence issue has rendered people voiceless. Had a strong backbench understood the need for voters to express their views through a referendum, the PLP Government would have been forced to respect the urge for a democratic expression on the question and to put the country through what would have been a healthy exercise.”

He added that if a strong PLP backbench had spoken out against the “fiscal indiscipline” involved in the building of the new senior secondary school — instead of supporting an exercise in “deception and denial” by then-Premier Alex Scott and his Cabinet colleagues — it would have saved Bermuda taxpayers tens of millions of dollars that could have been used for other pressing public needs, particularly housing.

PLP backbenchers, said Sen. Swan, should have spoken out against the failures in education instead of sitting idly by while the policies of PLP Ministers continued to fail Bermuda’s children.

“This failure of the PLP backbench to hold their colleagues to govern better has failed the people they were elected to represent. The connection is direct and absolute!” he said.

“Alternatively, had the Opposition received the number of seats (16 or 17) proportionate to the 48-plus per cent of the vote we received, Cabinet Ministers would not have had the luxury to be the jet-setters they have been for the past nine years.

“Greater accountability would have been demanded; complacency would not have been an option.”

Sen. Swan said Bermuda could not afford to consider giving the “Brown Government” another term.

“We certainly cannot give him (Dr. Ewart Brown) unbridled reign. He and his colleagues have not earned it. Their members have under performed big time, and their weak backbench has made it possible for them to get away with it.”

He said the issue of Independence continued to loom and the people of Bermuda deserved to be guaranteed that they would be given the chance to decide the issue through a referendum.

“For the record, while I feel a United Bermuda Party victory would best serve Bermuda at this time, I feel it would be in the best interest of Bermuda for the winning party to operate on a close majority in the House of Assembly (19-17). “The Bermuda people deserve to have their elected members more accountable, and a close majority would achieve this objective,” he said.

As Bermudians prepare to go to the polls, Sen. Swan said it was important for voters to determine how their votes could best guarantee their voice has a place in public life.

“A PLP landslide would not be healthy for our democracy, unless one wants a continuation of unbridled spending and fiscal indiscipline, not to mention arrogance and overall mismanagement of the people’s business,” he added.

Backbench