Activist: We cannot go on playing race politics
According to Sanders Frith Brown
“We cannot go on playing this race politics. We have talked about it bluntly, the fact that we need to have a dialogue. We need the history of treatment of people of colour in Bermuda formally put in our education system.
“We need to honour the wrong, to study history so we don’t repeat its mistakes. White people need to apologise. We need to have white racists sit at the table and look black anger in the eye. We need to be aware of how we humiliated and degraded people of colour. A community dialogue is within reach.
“There’s so much potential here and our schools, especially, need the support of the (United Bermuda Party) and the (Progressive Labour Party). It’s a community issue. We need to take it out of the blame market.
“Education should be bipartisan. Dale Butler (Social Rehabilitation Minister) should have been Education Minister, instead Ewart Brown put him in a marginal place.
“I think Ewart Brown is afraid of Dale Butler’s popularity. I have asked 2,000 black Bermudians in the past ten years who should be Education Minister and every one of them said Dale Butler. If the whole country thinks this, why not give him a chance?”
Part of the problem, Mr. Frith Brown believes, is the way decisions have historically been reached by the island’s parties.
“People mutter that I’m a loose canon. I’m one of few people who try and give balance to the system. I do not believe in party politics. There is too much power entrenched in the hands of individuals. I have no beef against (Premier) Ewart Brown but how many portfolios can he hold? Would nine be enough? Then he can truly be the dictator he seems to want to be.
“Throughout my adult life, politics in Bermuda has been run like a cabal. The Premier should not be allowed to choose a Cabinet. We need the cumulative intellect of the community.
“I want reporters to be able to sit in Cabinet. I want — at least on the face of it, because of course (MPs) can talk privately — the public to have access.
“We need the Cabinet to meet in the sunshine of public scrutiny. Instead, the Cabinet meets in secrecy and whatever is voiced and decided on becomes law.
“What’s called debate in the House of Parliament is not debate, it’s idle posturing. The joke is that (everything) has already been decided.” Mr. Frith Brown said he believed Dr. Brown to be a capable leader, but one who needed direction.
“Ewart Brown has so much potential. He’s a bright, articulate man. He’s savvy. He’s a charismatic man. We’ve got to face Ewart Brown and say, ‘Be the best you can’. We need him to govern in the sunshine of public scrutiny.
“I don’t think the PLP is doing any worse than the UBP did, it’s just a little more transparent. The UBP were the 40 thieves. They called the shots, they owned the businesses.
“So my criticism has nothing to do with Ewart Brown or blacks or the PLP. I wrote more letters which were critical of the UBP by ten, than I have of the PLP.
“When John Swan was Premier and (Austrian financier and businessman Wolfgang) Flottl went into business with him, do you think he would have done so if he weren’t Premier? Position attracts opportunity and a man of integrity divorces himself from that.
“Ultimately, the national hero of Bermuda was Dame Lois Browne Evans. She was articulate and strident in her demands for reform and she was right. She is the ultimate hero.
“Thirty years ago I realised what she did not only had to be done, but she did it with calm and insistence and without inciting violence. She should be honoured as the Nelson Mandela of Bermuda.
“All other members of the PLP are footnotes. No single person deserved (a knighthood) more than she.”
Activist:<\p>‘Stop the race politics’
