crowning touch to a strange role reversal occurring between Bermuda's two main parties.

Unfortunately, the Opposition Progressive Labour Party is adopting the worst traits of Government, while members of the governing United Bermuda Party are trotting out ideas the PLP will not admit to embracing.

Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan has launched the Island on a costly and divisive exploration of Independence, despite an apparent lack of public interest.

Community and Cultural Affairs Minister the Hon. Wayne Furbert has suggested that Government contracts be awarded not on the basis of price and merit, but the colour of the contractor's skin.

Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Mr. Frederick Wade has criticised the Premier's latest Senate appointment because a black woman was named when he felt a white woman should have been chosen.

And now senior UBP statesman the Hon. Sir John Plowman has proposed income tax.

Surely, the two parties are switching coats.

But it was not until Mr. Wade delivered his Reply to the Throne Speech on Wednesday that the full extent of this bizarre metamorphosis hit home.

In parliamentary democracies around the world, Governments faced with intractable problems and public cries for action have consistently thrown up their hands and arrived at the same answer -- appoint a Royal Commission.

Opposition parties have consistently decried such moves as the stalling tactics that they often are.

Like all parties in Opposition, the PLP has had the luxury of addressing problems with proposed solutions that it knows it will never have to successfully implement or pay for. The fact that the call for a Royal Commission on Crime came from the Opposition benches suggests that the PLP is now bankrupt even of ideas which might not work.

It is true that the PLP suggestion is one that we sooner would have expected from Government. But if that is Mr. Wade's idea of the conduct of a Government-in-waiting, his party will be waiting a long time.

And what can one make of Independence and income tax talk from UBP members? Is the party seeking to portray itself as the Opposition in Waiting? Bermudians have reason to be disenchanted and confused.

What is in danger of being overlooked in the muddle is a serious and concerted effort to address a rise in crime which, if left unchecked, will wreak permanent damage on the Island.

In this case, a Royal Commission is needlessly formal, unwieldy and time-consuming, particularly when many of the answers to the crime problem are contained in two recent reports -- the National Drugs Strategy and the Tumim Report on Criminal Justice.

The Premier was correct when he said it was up to all Bermudians to stop drugs and crime. While the effects are far-reaching and devastating, the perpetrators represent a tiny minority on the Island.

If a true partnership can be forged between the Police and concerned residents, the immediate dangers can quickly be tackled.

The more difficult task of Government and Opposition is longer-term -- assuring Bermuda's education, training, and employment practices are improved so that a lifestyle of drugs and crime is chosen by far fewer people.