The National Liberal Party has mixed feelings about the Boundaries Commission report.

The electorate would still be "over-represented" with 36 Members of Parliament, said the party's secretary general Graeme Outerbridge last week.

"What's there to say? It's a fait accompli," Mr. Outerbridge said when contacted for his response. "We would have been happier with 32 (single seat constituencies). There's still a lot of waste of taxpayer's money. It's-over representation. One representative representing 1,500 people is no great difference than representing 1,200 people.

"And to the criticism of whether there's enough backbenchers our response is consolidate some of the Ministries and make the Cabinet smaller."

The ruling Progressive Labour Party (PLP) had pushed for 32 single seats in its own submission to the Boundaries Commission, while the United Bermuda Party (UBP) had argued for 39 plus an independently appointed Speaker of the House.

Both parties have said publicly that they accept the compromise hammered out.

Mr. Outerbridge did say that he was pleased that the Commissioners had been sensitive in their naming of the constituencies.

"As far as the way things have been drawn right now it seems to have been done with sensitivity to geography and trying to keep voter communities intact to some degree. Naming them with parish names shows sensitivity."

"It's intriguing because nobody knows" the political impact of the proposed new electoral map, he added.

"Going forward I would hope there's no safe seat in Bermuda and that voters will really make their representatives accountable. And they (representatives) won't be able to parry off responsibility as they could under dual seats."

He agreed that a single seat system could improve his party's chances at the polls. "But again because of the first past the post system unless we can increase our share of the vote we still have the situation where you can have a percentage of the vote but no representation."

Future elections, he added, will give each political party and independent candidates a "nice clean shot" as voters won't have the option of splitting votes.