since its General Election victory.

Eleven and a half months ago, the PLP came to power on a tremendous wave of goodwill and euphoria which promised limitless possibilities if it could be harnessed.

It is perhaps inevitable that some of that goodwill has gone; such intensity of feeling is difficult to sustain and almost all honeymoons have to end eventually. Governing is hard, requiring tough decisions which cannot please everyone.

Nonetheless, there is a sense that the same level of support and near-messianic adulation given to the new Government has dissipated and to some extent, the Government's own actions -- or inaction -- are responsible.

There is a feeling that the Government has achieved less than it could have or should have and certainly far less than was promised a year ago. Premier Jennifer Smith has acknowledged that progress has been slower than the Government wanted. Much of the blame, she says, lies with "the last lot'' and the Civil Service's structure, although not the civil servants themselves.

Other MPs have argued that, to use a cricket analogy, it takes time for the new batsman to get his eye in -- give us time, and the runs will flow.

All of that may be true -- but as an editorial in the Mid Ocean News argued, a party which had 35 years in Opposition getting ready for Government has at times seemed woefully ill-prepared.

The idea that the PLP would be a more honest broker in labour relations has not held water. It is true that the hotels and the Bermuda Industrial Union succeeded in reaching a quick contract. But the Island has been wracked by what seems to be almost weekly labour disruptions, some major and some minor, and almost all ending in arbitration rather than resolved through collective bargaining.

In tourism, where Minister David Allen promised a rescue plan, the results have been disappointing and there is perhaps now some recognition that there are no quick fixes for the structural problems facing the industry.

And the PLP's election promise of tax incentives for the hotel industry must now seem like a sick joke as the industry looks around for the money to pay land tax increases of between 30 and 120 percent.

Indeed, the PLP's ham-handed handling of the land tax increase dented its efforts to be seen as effective managers of Government finances. Months after trumpeting its ability to balance the Budget without increasing many taxes, it called on the taxpayer for an extra $7 million. Even the populist decision to raise the taxes of the rich while handing savings to the "other 75 percent'' backfired when pensioners -- many of them the least able to handle an increase -- found their tax bills shooting up by as much as 2,000 percent.

The refusal of the Government to say what it intended to use the money for made it appear arrogant, and made it seem almost believable that it was needed to pay for the overseas travel which Cabinet Ministers have indulged in.

Indeed silence, at least until recently, was threatening to become the Government's hallmark. The Government, and the Cabinet Office in particular, may dislike the media, but in the end it is the public which suffers if little is being said about Government policy.

Some successes have gone almost unnoticed -- the Ministry of Finance appears to have been winning the war against having Bermuda blacklisted as a tax haven, but few members of the public would have the faintest idea.

And it must be said that the dire predictions of the most zealous supporters of the previous Government who essentially warned that the sky would fall in if the PLP was elected have been proven wrong.

But those who expected open government and fresh approaches to policy must be disappointed.

The Government has five years to fulfil its promise, but so far progress has been painfully slow.