up black-owned business as partners in order to win a domestic telephone licence raises some troubling issues.

At its heart is the question of how Bermuda should go about redressing the imbalance in control of the economy.

Historically, whites controlled the bulk of local business, and by extension, the economy. To a lesser extent this is so today, and it is disturbing that 40 years after the end of segregation, few of the major local companies in Bermuda are headed or owned by blacks, who make up 60 percent of the population.

Under the previous government, a process of gradual change was in effect and the fact that successful black businessmen like Sir John Swan, Irving Pearman and Gerald Simons had leading roles in the UBP reflected this. Nonetheless, many felt change was happening too slowly and was uneven and this was one of the key reasons for the United Bermuda Party's defeat and the Progressive Labour Party's victory in 1998.

Unsurprisingly, the current Government wants to speed up the process of change and this has been done both formally, through legislation like the CURE Regulations, and informally by people like Telecommunications Minister Renee Webb, who has told Cable & Wireless that until they get partners "who look like her'' they will not get a licence to start a new local telephone service.

Ms Webb's actions are troubling for a number of reasons.

One is the fact that she has picked on Cable & Wireless, which has an outstanding record of Bermudianisation and "good corporate citizenship'' and has already had its overseas calling monopoly stripped from it.

It is "white-owned'' in the sense that it is a publicly held British company, but C&W is typical of a different trend; that of globalisation. Increasingly, Bermuda is going to be served by foreign-owned multinationals. Will each of those have to have a black-owned local business as a partner? That raises the second troubling question.

Ms Webb appears to be making this policy up as she goes along. Certainly, there is no Government policy in place that this newspaper is aware of. Why should C&W be picked on here when some other business seeking a licence is not. Where is BTC's black partner -- or is the fact its chairman is a black man enough to satisfy Ms Webb? What about companies which are jointly owned by a black and a white partner? If Government believes that it needs to put a policy of this kind in place it needs to do so and to announce to the public that it is taking effect from a specified time. But such a policy is complex and difficult to put into place and to regulate. It needs wide debate, both on its merits and on its technical requirements. The CURE regulations show that.

The final and most troubling issue is the human rights issue which has been raised, correctly, by the UBP.

Discrimination is not a one-way street. No-one would dispute that it is wrong to dismiss a person because he or she is black or a woman. But Ms Webb appears to have no difficulty with barring a white male from starting a business because he is the wrong colour and gender and white males have too much control of business already.

It is hard to disagree with Opposition Leader Pamela Gordon, who said: "There is a difference between a well thought out policy for empowering people that have been disadvantaged economically in the past versus a Minister of Government sanctioning blatant discrimination. And it will not surprise me if the Government finds itself in court over this.''