Ashfield DeVent ?watered down? the debate on the senior secondary school construction project in the House of Assembly on Friday reducing it to a take note motion.

After the amendment, Shadow Education Minister poured scorn on Government for failing the Island?s children by their management of the project.

?We have delayed dreams,? he told MPs. ?We have delayed prospects that could have been.?

When Labour Minister interjected that disappointment was a part of life, Mr. Darrell said disappointment leads to cynicism. ?For example, I?m cynical about a completion date of September, 2005.

?When people are disappointed, people act out,? he added later. ?We cannot dismiss those events we create, on purpose or by default, that have the effect of chipping away at the social order.?

Government has taught children that it is better to ?give a good line, make it up? than toe the line and use sound judgment, he said.

Shadow Transport Minister Jamahl Simmons said he had no dispute with who Government gave the contract to and why.

However, he said, if the move was about economic empowerment, then Government had a responsibility to stand up and outline an economic empowerment programme.

Instead, Government sounds ?duplicitous?, he said, with a Minister calling for contracts to be given to ?people who look like me? and others to people ?with merit?. ?There is no clear, concise, honest and open economic empowerment process.?

The point of long-term economic empowerment, he said, was to enable businesses to stand on their own no matter who was in power. ?Yes, there have been inequities, there have been serious inequities, and those need to be addressed.?

Government, he said, is not addressing them ? despite the fact there are more black Bermudians in the House of Assembly than ever before in history.

Last year?s ?close election? should have been a warning, he said. Instead, ?we?ve heard it?s the UBP?s fault ... Somebody did something in 1825 and it?s all the UBP?s fault ... We?ve heard excuses.

?When will they learn? It took a defeat at the polls for us to learn ... if they continue on the same path they are going, they are destined to the same fate.

?When will somebody be held accountable for failure??

Government backbencher defended Pro-Active?s record while listing the odds that were stacked against them.

Pro-Active never told Government the roof of the school as complete, he said, in response to allegations of water coming in. ?Obviously there was water coming in.?

With no companies in Bermuda willing to give Pro-Active money for the bond, he said, Union Assets Holding ?did the right thing? by putting the money up.

Banks and financial institutions did not want to give Pro-Active loans, he said, and local companies did not co-operate either. Many companies even closed Pro-Active?s credit accounts.

Most of the blame for the failure of the project should go to the architects, he said, with 70 percent of the steel at the site having to be redesigned. Pro-Active?s repeated requests for information went unanswered for weeks, contributing to the delays.

?What were they supposed to do while waiting for information, send all their workers home?? he wondered. To do so in Bermuda, he said, would mean losing those workers to other construction sites ? and without being able to bring in foreign workers, things were difficult for Pro-Active from the start.

Now, he said, the lives of Pro-Active workers have been ruined.

Across the House, Shadow Home Affairs Minister agreed.

He also blamed Government for not admitting to the problems from the beginning. ?Somebody said it was on time and on budget when everybody in Bermuda knew about the problem with the steel.

?Someone ? he calls himself The Man ? said that, when everybody knew.?

Once Government admitted to the problem, he said, the public still does not know what happened to the steel engineers: ?Are you suing those engineers? Did you fire them? To date we do not know.?

Foreigners, Mr. Burgess said, drew the plans, got their money, and ?are not being sued ... but a black Bermudian company got fired. That?s why the country?s saying it?s deplorable ... I don?t know how the PLP can look black entrepreneurs in the face.?

Mr. Derrick Burgess nodded his head as Mr. Burgess complained the reason financial institutions were not willing to lend money to the contractors was because Government did not show its faith in them.

The PLP also owes it to the members of the BIU to say what happened to the bond which members of the BIU paid for through Union Assets Holdings, he said.

Mr. Burgess said he had heard Government had gone beyond the politically appointed Attorney General to hire lawyers from Conyers, Dill and Pearman for the legal battles in the wake of Pro-Active?s termination. Though he promised to ?sit for two seconds? while Government contradicted him on that rumour, Government MPs chuckled but did not stand.

?I thought they were paying the Attorney General well,? Mr. Burgess quipped. ?Now they?ll get some legal bills.?

The first PLP Government, he told Deputy Speaker Jennifer Smith, ?under a different Premier, had a vision? of a level playing field for all Bermudians.

The construction of the senior secondary school, he said, was seen at the way to reach that ?laudable goal?.

The results, however, have dashed the hopes of ?at least three generations of black Bermudians.?

A young person he spoke with recently told him he would vote UBP at the next election, Mr. Burgess said. When asked why, the young man replied: ?I want the PLP to know what it feels like to wake up in the morning and be told you don?t have a job.?

Minister of Telecommunications and E-Commerce castigated the Opposition for adding ?no substance and pure hyperbole? to the debate.

He argued that the Berkeley project had been well managed ?from start to finish? by Government and that ?every dollar had been accounted for?.

?The fiscal management of this project has been sound,? he said.

?The politicisation of this issue by the Opposition is insipid and puerile and will ultimately ring hollow. There will be a good story to tell at the end of all this and this debate will ultimately pale into insignificance.?

Mr. Scott also termed the UBP?s argument that black economic empowerment agenda had been set back by three generations as ?errant nonsense? while he called the Opposition?s submission that the Government had something to hide by not subscribing to a public inquiry into the project both ?facile and indulgent?.

Shadow Minister for Youth and Sport criticised Mr. Scott as being ?divorced from reality? and argued that the Government was sending out a very poor message to Bermuda?s young people by ?saying it is okay to make a promise and not stick to it?.

?Where is the accountability?? he questioned.

?The financial over-runs of this project are cutting into the funds that need to be spent on building community centres and giving our young people constructive alternatives with which to fill their time. But the Government is conspicuously failing them.?, Shadow Minister for Race Relations and Economic Opportunity, labelled Premier Scott?s administration as a ?Government in hiding? and predicted that the ?Berkeley fiasco? would turn out to be ?Bermuda?s Watergate?.

He took issue with Minister Scott?s argument that the fiscal management of the project had been sound, calling the claim ?outrageous?.

He further predicted that the final construction bill would be around $150 million ? ?well over double what was originally allocated and a colossal waste?.

?The public feels betrayed over Berkeley and this fiasco will certainly turn out to be the Government?s Achilles heel both now and in the future,? he said.

At the conclusion of his speech, Mr. Dodwell demanded that the Premier, who was not present in the chamber, ?come out to be held accountable before the people of Bermuda?.

Premier Scott was sent for by Government Party whip , but Deputy Speaker closed the debate in the absence of any other members ready to address the House.

The Premier entered the chamber soon after and successfully moved a motion for the House to be adjourned.