Deputy Premier Ewart Brown launched a tirade against the media at a public meeting, declaring he would no longer be answering ?plantation questions? from the Press.

The unprompted blast ? during which Dr. Brown accused journalists of being ?sometimes over-zealous and aggressive? ? was greeted with ripples of approval from the audience at Warwick Workman?s Club.

Opposition Leader Wayne Furbert last night branded the remarks ?unfortunate and erroneous? and said voters were tired of the PLP?s rhetoric.

The Minister of Tourism and Transport was giving an update on his portfolio at a community meeting on Monday evening when he made the comments.

He told a packed hall: ?I mean no disrespect to the media when I ignore them, but I just don?t have the time to answer each and every question that they raise.

?I had a meeting today with one member of the media and told him some of the questions seemed to be unreasonable and unfair and that in future I would be declining to answer certain questions on the grounds that they are plantation questions.

?That?s the most polite thing I can say.?

Later, discussing plans for the former Club Med resort in St. George?s, he admitted it had become a ?pain in the you know what? for Bermuda.

The Government last month dropped plans to work with Canadian-based consortium Quorum on the re-development and has now named a new developer, Connecticut-based KJA.

At a Press conference last week, Dr. Brown was reluctant to give information about KJA or its plans for Club Med.

He told the public meeting: ?I will always tell the truth. I might not tell all of it.? He added that it was not his job to ?report each day what?s going on with the developer?.

He said: ?That?s why a lot of people run away from here, because their deals get killed in their infancy by a sometimes overzealous and aggressive Press.

?It?s un-Bermudian not to want tourism to get fixed but some people don?t want it fixed right now.

?So when we have something in the works that I think is going to result in something being done I?m going to protect that deal, especially while it?s fragile, just like a baby.

?No amount of pressure from any source is going to cause us to break the confidentiality with a developer and to cause him to turn around and say the Government is putting my business out on the street.?

He said that Quorum had not satisfied the Government?s conditions so its right to exclusivity on the deal expired.

?Another developer indicated an interest and that developer is now being given a period of exclusivity,? he said. ?What?s going to be different is that we are going to be closer to the situation day by day.

?We are supremely confident that the project is going to go through and I don?t make idle promises to people.?

During the last General Election in 2003, Dr. Brown declared that: ?Voting for the UBP would be the equivalent of voting yourself back onto the plantation?. Last July, he challenged the Opposition to apologise for the legacy of the plantation system in the House of Assembly.

Mr. Furbert told : ?It?s unfortunate in this day and time that a guy who I respect quite a bit as an individual is still painting this erroneous picture just for votes and to try to win back the support they are losing quite rapidly.

?I think it worked last time and it may work on a few this time but I think people are tired of the rhetoric that is coming out of the Progressive Labour Party about plantation or house niggers. People are fed up with that type of speech.?

He added that he did not think the media had behaved aggressively toward the Government with regard to Club Med.

?All they are doing is printing information and trying to get answers that the general public want to know about.?