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PLP Founder’s Day speaker calls on party to speed up reforms

The Progressive Labour Party should speed up the process when it comes to reforms, a young member said at Founders’ Day yesterday.Forty-eight years ago, on February 10, seven men Hugh Richardson, Edward DeJean, Walter Robinson, Wilfred Allen, Albert Smith, Dilton Cann and R Austin Wilson founded the PLP in a garage. Yesterday the party celebrated their efforts.Kyhuan Brown, the first CedarBridge Academy student to become a doctor, congratulated the party on its youth involvement and historical legacy of bringing about social change. Dr Brown, 30, said looking forward he saw: “A Government endeavoring to spread a piece of the economic pie to those who have previously been excluded.”He added that Government was now focused on resetting the dial in a nod to Premier Paula Cox’s slogan for the 2010/2011 Budget. But he noted that at a recent party meeting they discussed a 2009 report. “It was unfortunate we were discussing a report released two years ago,” he said. “When I asked another member why, I was told ‘there is a process’. We should have discussed it in 2009, implemented in 2010 and be reviewing it in 2011. Young members respect that there is a process but we recognize that it simply doesn’t have to take so long.”He said he believed the difference between the “UBP, NewBP or very, very new BDA” and PLP was: “The PLP involves the youth in the process.”He added the party also doesn’t air its dirty laundry in public. Dr Brown, ended his speech by saying: “I am proud of our people, proud of our legacy, proud of our strength and proud of our accomplishments. PLP all the way, all the way PLP from garage to Government.”Dr Brown, who practices at Hope Health Care and is the president of Ultra Concepts Group, joined the PLP five years ago. Premier Paula Cox presented Drum Major awards to community members who made a difference in Bermuda.This year the recipients were tennis coach Sam Maybury, former school principal Melvyn Bassett and Kenneth Bartram of the Duke of Edinburgh programme as well as Marlene Smith, who has registered more voters in Constituency 16 than anyone else in the party.