Smith: OBA must build trust in the party and in the country
Building public trust will help position the One Bermuda Alliance as a genuine contender for victory in the next General Election, its interim leader said this week.
Ben Smith, who took the reins last week after a caucus vote, insisted that he will develop the party as a government-in-waiting rather than merely a strong Opposition.
He also outlined some of the matters that he believes require priority attention, such as education, homelessness and the island’s high cost of living.
Mr Smith and Scott Pearman, the deputy OBA leader, spoke to The Royal Gazetteafter the swift ousting of Robert King as Leader of the Opposition, which caused outcry from some members who supported Mr King at a party leadership election in September.
Having assumed the top roles, Mr Smith said he saw himself developing a government-in-waiting and that there was a strong chance the OBA could win the next election.
Asked what would deliver the party to that point, he said: “We have to continue to build trust from the public.”
Mr Smith, who is also the Shadow Minister of Education and Sport, added: “First, you have to have trust within your team, what I have to do is mend those fences.
“It will have to happen internally and with our members, but we have to do that quickly because the whole goal is to build that trust with the country.
“The initial conversations I have had with my caucus members and my parliamentary team is that this is going to be about me doing what I am good at — unifying our team.
“It will be about elevating us and connecting us to our community. We have massive problems in our country.”
On what needs to be fixed in Bermuda, Mr Smith’s first response was: “We just had a weekend that was one of the coldest in history and we have over a thousand people who are homeless. That has to be a priority for any Government that is in power.”
Mr Smith said the OBA had been perceived as focusing on the needs of the business community and that work had been done to shift that perception. He said the OBA “carried the weight” of being associated with the United Bermuda Party.
“That can’t be the case,” he insisted. “I was never a UBP person. Jarion [Richardson, a former Opposition leader], and me always said we were first-generation OBA.”
He said that honest conversations needed to take place with the international business community around how Bermudians are being priced out of housing in their own country.
Speaking to solutions, Mr Smith said: “Some housing is going to have to be built.
“The long-term goal has to be to look at some of the brownfield sites that are owned by Government. Let’s design what that could look like … and then bring the construction companies together to find out which ones are interested.”
He said that concessions must be provided on housing projects to help reduce the costs of construction.
A reduction of 10 per cent customs duty on building material and supplies was introduced by the Progressive Labour Party administration from July 2025.
The Government has also been working with the Bermuda Housing Corporation to create affordable housing.
Zane DeSilva, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Housing and Municipalities, said in a recent opinion piece that the PLP had renovated or built more than 100 units since 2017.
Speaking on education, Mr Smith said that an independent education authority is key, with the emphasis on independent, to lead education policy, removing politicians from the mix.
Diallo Rabain, a former Minister of Education, earlier told the Gazette that an education authority could never be fully independent as it would be funded by the Government.
That sentiment was dismissed by Mr Smith along with Mr Pearman, with the latter noting that the court system is funded by the Government.
However, Mr Pearman added that the court system should have its own budget, independent of the Government, as should any autonomous entity, to “protect its integrity”.
He added: “We fundamentally believe that the corporate income tax money should go to the CIT agency and not the Government, and the general Consolidated Fund.”
Scott Pearman, the deputy leader of the One Bermuda Alliance and Shadow Minister of Legal Affairs, said the four big drivers of cost to Bermudians are housing, energy, food and healthcare.
He reiterated policies the party outlined in a parliamentary motion at the end of 2025 and said that the OBA had presented “a partial solution” to each.
On food pricing, Mr Pearman said: “We believe that food costs would come down on this island if we were to repeal the sugar tax because we think that is a stealth tax that puts the price up for all food.”
Speaking to energy costs, he pointed to the powers of the Regulatory Authority.
He said: “We have met with the regulator that has expressed openly the problem is that they don’t have sufficient teeth in the legislation.
“They want changes to it so that they can take into account public policy concerns and standards of living et cetera when they regulate.
“We would make that change. We would give the regulator the power it needs to control electricity prices in a way they feel they should.”
On housing, Mr Pearman said: “The Progressive Labour Party put up the foreign policy purchase tax. That is the tax that applies whenever you buy US dollars with Bermuda dollars.
“If you put the tax up, you are taxing all imports onto the island. We would reduce that tax, possibly across the board or possibly specifically to housing materials.”
Mr Pearman said that reducing healthcare costs was “probably the most difficult”.
He added: “I can tell you two things that need looking at: one is utilisation; we are among the most over-tested people in the world.
“We also have some issues where medical practitioners are connected to medical service providers. We need to look at that.
“We are shrinking a segment of our population that are younger and healthier.
“Ten years ago, we had more paying into the pot and not taking out. They are gone. Now we have older people who are just taking out.”
Mr Pearman referenced immigration policies he said had driven guest workers away.
He added: “We also need to ask, are we having a stand-alone hospital to provide 100 per cent of services or should we have other services elsewhere?
“Then we have to look at health insurance. We support universal healthcare coverage but the question is, how is that done?
“In a nutshell, we want to see it provided through the private sector. Can that be through an assigned risk healthcare pool? Maybe.”
Mr Smith said that even if an independent education authority was funded by the Government, once the desired outcomes have been established, it should be afforded autonomy.
He said the success of students, not least their academic success, should be part of those outcomes, and that experts, including educators, should determine how that is achieved.
He added that an OBA government would publish individual schools’ results so that performance can be more transparent and better understood.
Mr Smith criticised the PLP’s education reform plans to abolish middle schools, saying the party never fully explained why they were a problem.
“Politicians only do those things for education because they want the headlines,” Mr Smith said. “The problem with education is that you have got to take politics out of it.”
He suggested that having researched the issues, it was his conclusion that the plan to abolish middle schools was influenced by pressure on young people to take the 11-plus exams, saying that while students were getting good results in primary school, they were achieving lower grades in middle school.
Mr Smith said that primary-level assessments should have been reviewed and that those pupils falling short required better support.
“Maybe we should figure out how to support them to get them back on track,” he said.
“Doesn’t that seem like a model that is more lined up for student results, instead of, let’s destroy the whole system and move in a completely different direction to fix this very specific problem?
“That is because a politician picked something up off the shelf.”
The PLP paid Innovation Unit, an overseas consultant now renamed Third Story, $8.4 million to help shape the future of education in Bermuda, with the help of local educators.
Some plans have been put on hold under the leadership of Crystal Caesar who took over as education minister in February of 2025.
Mr Smith said a methodical approach to politics overall was needed.
He added: “We have to say, this is the desired outcome, these are the steps to get to it and these are the potential obstacles along the way.
“When we are talking about doing politics differently, we should be planning for the next 50 years of the country.
“Some of the things we are dealing with now are because we were only worrying about this next cycle in front of us.
“When you do that, you end up with not enough housing, you end up not understanding the issues that are hurting your community.
“We have issues now but we also have to be thinking well into the future.”
The Opposition leader said that those with the most “immediate” needs must be targeted so that “they are not completely being left out of the country”.
“Every decision you make has to be about, how are you impacting the quality of life of the people in Bermuda?
“That is going to mean different things to different segments of our country.”
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