Former United Bermuda Party campaign chairman David Sullivan believes his party is doomed to failure at the coming election.

He believes his party can only pick up a maximum of 17 seats — two short of what’s needed to govern.

And Mr. Sullivan, who ran the UBP’s campaign from 1998 and 2002, believes voters are becoming sick of the way both parties are bypassing the important issues.

He told The Royal Gazette the most his party could achieve this time around was to become a more effective Opposition.

He said: “I don’t see any more than 17 seats for the Opposition party.

:It will be better for Bermuda to have a stronger Opposition, which is a good thing for Bermuda.”

He forecast the UBP should pick up at least one seat in St. George’s, possibly with Kim Swan unseating Dean Foggo, although it could lose St. David’s in a parochial fight while the PLP’s Dame Jennifer Smith should survive despite her wafer-thin eight-vote majority.

He said the Opposition could gain one more seat in Warwick but UBP tourism spokesman David Dodwell has a tough fight retaining Southampton East Central, particularly if the All Bermuda Congress run a spoiling campaign, given the unlikelihood of it taking any seats.

“If the ABC go into a Dodwell/DeSilva seat and become the difference — and only the difference — then what have they achieved, other than possibly electing the wrong person with their 25-40 votes they have scooped off the top?”

He said a tight win for the PLP nationally would make it pretty tough for it to conduct business and could curb ministerial travel in order not to lose crucial votes in Parliament.

“That might be the win-win scenario that comes out of this,” he said.

“People might call that heresy and say I am wishing bad luck on the UBP. I am not. But it’s a simple matter of numbers you have to deal with.

“If we have a 17-19 House, it won’t be five years until the next election. I can tell you that.

“I think the United Bermuda Party has a certain amount of time to spend in, for want of a better word, purgatory. But I am not one who subscribes to the theory they had 30-35 years of unbridled power and that sort of nonsense.

“History will show there were at least two attempts where the Progressive Labour Party could have become Government. The fact is they never did.”

Eventually the UBP had run out of gas but he said now there was widespread disappointment with the PLP’s spell in power.

“There were hopes displayed last time around that perhaps the Progressive Labour Party would at last become a labour party and not an adjunct of the United Bermuda Party’s 30 years of service.”

But, said Mr. Sullivan, the first five years of the PLP was just an extension of UBP rule.

“It is difficult even today to draw a sharp line as far as policies and programmes which the current Government undertakes.

“I think that’s why we are seeing a growing dissatisfaction amongst the electorate waiting for the PLP to do something different.

“It is talked about at social gatherings that the best United Bermuda Party government we ever had was in the last eight years because there isn’t a single programme that the current government hasn’t added onto from the former government.”

He the PLP had buried long-held principles such as income tax, immigration and Bermudianisation and the best which could be said about its time in power was garbage is now picked up twice a week and families aren’t hit with death duties.

Mr. Sullivan said there was now a growing cynicism with both parties as voters asked themselves whether their needs were being addressed.

At the 2003 election, he said, few knew what the PLP stood for because it only released its platform at the final moment.

“If we are going to run a campaign on less corruption I don’t think that is enough to energise voters to go to the polls.

“Tell me you really have a plan for housing, education and for small business — then I am interested in what you have to say.

“Otherwise you are just talking the same gobbledegook you have been talking for the last nine years as Government and as far as the Opposition you don’t seem to have anything for us either so I guess you like being opposition. “There aren’t the things that will resonate with people such as education, health, housing and business from either side at the moment.”