contracts.

Government has taken away the $3.3 million contract for airport security from one of the Island's largest security firms, Islandwide Security, and granted it to Guardwell, a relatively small firm.

And the $70 million contract for the new Berkeley Institute seems almost certain to be granted to another relatively small company, Pro-Active Construction, which put in a bid which was $5 million higher than the lowest bidder.

As a result, there have been innumerable rumours about political cronyism and claims that the companies' backers are prominent Progressive Labour Party members or friends of the Government.

Based on the facts, there has been little evidence of direct Government involvement.

In the case of Guardwell, an ownership search by this newspaper eventually revealed that the single largest shareholder is Irving Pearman, the former United Bermuda Party Cabinet Minister. It is hard to see why the Progressive Labour Party would wish to display favouritism towards him.

There are rumours that some of Guardwell's staff are PLP sympathisers and friends of some of the current Government. In Bermuda, conflicts of interest of that kind have always been hard to avoid. That does not make it right, but the issue has to be whether tenders are granted to the best bidder in a fair and transparent manner.

Invariably, race will figure in this. White-owned businesses will claim they are being denied the contracts because of their race and because they are not PLP supporters.

Blacks will accuse those white-owned firms of sour grapes and will say that under the previous Government, the same white-owned firms continually got the big jobs. Exhibit number one in that particular case will be the Sea-Land Construction bail-out over Westgate.

In spite of that, they will be wrong. The UBP worked hard in its latter years in Government to make tendering more open and to spread work around to smaller firms. Exhibit number one for the UBP defence is CedarBridge Academy, where dozens of firms got work under the overall umbrella of Somers Construction. As with Pro-Active today, Somers had little or no track record at the time, but won the tender, in part because it was prepared to spread the wealth.

Government has not indicated whether this will be the case with Berkeley.

In the end, this comes down to that famous PLP campaign promise which has mainly been honoured in the breach; transparency.

If the Government wishes to spread the wealth and "diversify'' grants of contracts, then it should say so instead of doing it secretly. If it is accused of discrimination, the courts should decide if this is so. But the policy should be debated in the "sunshine of public scrutiny'', not carried out behind the scenes where rumours and innuendo thrive and innocent people are hurt.

Whatever the case may be, Government must still ensure that the bidder can do the job efficiently and effectively.

It may be that Guardwell and Pro-Active can. But when millions of dollars in taxpayers' money is concerned, surely a sterner test than "may be'' is needed and it is up to Government to publicly and openly explain its decisions as soon as possible.