irrepressible expectation of an election call by Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan.

The combination of the two fanned more than the usual amount of fingerpointing, antagonism and chest-puffing among the Island's politicians.

But for all the posturing, it was a year in which their most significant role was to act as referees for an increasingly disputatious public.

While the United Bermuda Party government and the Progressive Labour Party waged standard back-and-forth battles in the House of Assembly, real conflict was taking place in contract talks between employers and unions over shrinking incomes.

By late June, the dispute between Bermuda Forwarders and the Bermuda Industrial Union spilled onto the streets. Work stoppages threatened to mushroom into an Island-wide strike.

At the last minute, with protesting workers circling the Sessions House, Parliament passed the Trades Disputes Act sending the dispute to arbitration.

The crisis abated, and a conditional peace was restored.

Bermuda's predicament was fixed at the start of the year when Finance Minister the Hon. David Saul in his February budget said the Island's economy would continue to shrink.

As the unemployed grew to more than 1,000, there were signs of a potential electoral fall-out.

Portuguese-Bermudians complained their community was paying an unnecessarily heavy price as long-time residents were told to leave the Island.

In November, Mr. John Amaral threatened to withdraw the key Portuguese-Bermudian support from the UBP.

"Whichever party supports our case, I think that's the party we're going to be voting for,'' he told a forum on immigration.

Premier Swan said his Government was preoccupied most of the year trying to protect Bermudians from recession.

"The past year has been a formidable challenge for us to walk Bermuda through what has been quite a minefield,'' he said last night.

"Most of our work has been aimed at solving problems. We haven't been focusing so much on issues.'' Many of Government's most significant actions this year have had the effect of diffusing issues and spreading out responsibility.

The appointments of the Task Force on Employment and the Commission of Competitiveness extended Government planning deep into the private sector for reports that have yet to be published.

Opposition Leader Mr. Frederick Wade says the commissions are taking responsibilities away from the very people elected to handle them, Bermuda's 40 MPs.

"This hasn't been a year when the people have had the benefit of Parliament as such,'' he said.

"Even moves to set up unemployment benefits are in the formative stages. And all of those task forces the Premier set up are still meeting. They were to be the panacea to our problems.

"They're just time-consuming, and they're weakening the responsible Ministers, particularly in Tourism. The people of Bermuda haven't had the action they deserve.'' The recession's dominance on national life probably also affected plans for an election.

Both parties gave every indication they were readying themselves for a vote that, in the end, never came.

During the course of the year, the PLP introduced seven new candidates. In early November, it published a full-page advertisement of 31 election hopefuls under the headline "Xchange them.'' At the end of October, the UBP launched a first-ever Island-wide canvass that saw every adopted candidate and party worker knock on voters' doors.

That same month, the party issued a direct mail campaign to Bermuda's young people. Nearly 4,000 letters from the Premier were sent to first-time voters addressing each recipient by name.

Those two events came at the end of primaries that saw two veteran Ministers challenged by political upstarts.

Deputy Premier the Hon. Ann Cartwright DeCouto and Tourism Minister the Hon.

C.V. (Jim) Woolridge were roused into weeks of canvassing to face down challenges made possible by a loosening of rules in the Party's constitution.

The most memorable moments in 1992 politics had little to do with policy or legislation and everything to do with the clashing of strong personalities.

The year began with tempers still smouldering over a remark by Opposition MP Mr. Julian Hall that the Premier had played a role in his bankruptcy in the early 1980s.

The comment, and the demands for a retraction, fired the bellies of MPs to such an extent it almost paralysed Parliamentary work at a time when more Bermudians than ever were losing their jobs.

Mr. Hall was forced by the House Speaker to apologise, but he didn't go far enough to satisfy Premier Swan.

And Swan himself enraged Opposition MPs when he declared that not one of them was "operating a successful operation.''