discipline for breaking ranks in electing a new House Speaker on Friday.

Government Whip Mr. John Barritt said the matter would be discussed at the UBP caucus meeting on Wednesday.

"Whenever someone doesn't vote with the Government, or with the party, there's always a question of discipline,'' Mr. Barritt told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

"It's fair to say that initially that will be a decision that will rest first with the Premier, and then with the caucus itself.'' The UBP lost the first skirmish of the new Parliament when its candidate for Speaker, Dr. David Dyer, was defeated in a secret ballot vote.

The Hon. Ernest DeCouto, who was UBP Deputy Speaker in the last Parliament, was instead elected after he was nominated by the Progressive Labour Party.

Mrs. Bell, Mr. Moniz, and Mr. DeCouto all voted in favour of a PLP motion that the Speaker be elected by secret ballot. Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan spoke against the motion, and the rest of the UBP caucus voted with him.

When Mr. DeCouto's nomination was put to a secret ballot, he was approved by a 22-17 vote. The ballots from the PLP and UBP sides of the House were collected in separate baskets and read aloud. All 18 PLP members voted for Mr. DeCouto.

It appeared that Mrs. Bell, Mr. Moniz, Mr. DeCouto, and one other UBP MP voted for Mr. DeCouto by secret ballot.

Mr. Moniz said yesterday his vote in favour of a secret ballot was on "a point of principle,'' and "I don't view that as a vote against the UBP''.

While he had heard nothing official from the caucus or the party, "I understand certain people may not be overly pleased,'' he said.

The lawyer and rookie Smith's South MP said he consulted Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice and found that "a contested vote for Speaker is always by way of secret ballot''.

The Speaker should be above party politics and "should not know who has voted for him, or who has voted against him,'' Mr. Moniz said.

He would not say how he voted on the secret ballot, but noted it was traditional for the Deputy Speaker to become Speaker. "I think it was clear that Mr. DeCouto had prepared himself for the job for the last five years,'' he said.

Mr. Barritt said he did not find the secret ballot reference that Mr. Moniz referred to when he checked his copy of Erskine May on Friday. In any case, "one initially has to look to the rules of our House,'' he said. "I'm not so sure one would follow the practice in the (English) House of Commons.'' In Canada, the rules were changed in 1985 to provide for a secret ballot vote for the election of a Speaker, an official in the House of Commons in Ottawa said on Friday.

Speaker Mr. John Fraser was elected by secret ballot in 1986 and again in 1988, she said.

From a procedural standpoint, Friday's secret ballot vote was proper in Bermuda because the House first passed a motion to allow it, a House of Commons researcher said.