Shadow Works Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin yesterday said Senator David Burch is making Bermuda look like a banana republic, dubbing his latest controversy "sickening and disgusting".

Yesterday's Royal Gazette reported how Hamilton Mayor Charles Gosling had posted Sen. Burch a letter about municipality reform — only to get it straight back, torn to pieces, in an envelope marked "Return to Sender".

"We are showing ourselves to be a banana republic, certainly, when a Minister of Government can have such contempt with that type of response, and there's no sanction to that Minister," Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin reacted yesterday.

"It's inexcusable, rude and disrespectful. There's no child of mine I would want to look at that person as any kind of role model. It's sickening and disgusting."

The incident — which Sen. Burch refuses to comment about — happened after the Mayor sent a copy of his Rotary speech on the corporations to all members of the Progressive Labour Party caucus.

Mr. Gosling said he was trying to outline how the under-threat Corporation of Hamilton is an ally of Government's, not an Opposition party; he believes new legislation, which could be debated within two weeks, could reduce the Corporation of Hamilton to nothing more than a ceremonial body.

It is the latest in a string of controversies surrounding Sen. Burch, whose comments about the "potential criminal behaviour" of three Opposition MPs had to be struck from the record of the Senate last month.

Acting President Walwyn Hughes ruled Sen. Burch had broken Senate rules by offending and insulting MPs — but the unrepentant Housing Minister maintained his comments were based on "irrefutable facts".

And in May he upset the Filipino community when he announced new visa requirements to crack down on women brought to Bermuda as prostitutes or as wives in "sham marriages".