What I think he inadvertently leaves out or misses, is the fact that many of our our regional leaders do not honour the Westminster System and the protocols that go with it. This points to a corrupt political leadership.
As Marc Bean, Leader of the Progressive Labour Party in Bermuda put it in an interview with Politica recently,
“Former PLP administrations had pursued a failed approach to economic empowerment for black people by enlarging the size of government to “employ those Bermudians who had been traditionally marginalised from the private sector, i.e Front Street, but what we didn’t realise is, with that good intention, all we were doing is shifting the dependency of our people from Front Street to the government. But that is the antithesis of what real power is.”
“Economic power, he said, would come from cooperating with each other to become competitive in the private sector. “There is something we can do and that is to do for self, create your own business – entrepreneurship. One thing oligarchs hate is competition.”
“The respect for private property includes people’s businesses. As long as a business is not committing fraud or using force to accomplish their goals then they should be free to do whatever they like,” he said.”
“In a practical way, I am willing and able to take those steps to ensure that this mindset that says that Bermudians are to be used and abused politically for narrow selfish interests has to be dealt with. This mindset that says government has to be large and government has to be supreme has to be changed.”
This would indeed be a reversal of the political trend in the region.
Blaming the Westminster System is incorrect. I believe Mr. Bean is on to something. In other words public policy is the problem and needs a change in direction if liberation from the bonds of government and political control is what society desires.
I suspect most of the regional political leadership likes the subservience they get from their constituents as a result of handing out special privileges to the few with other people's money though.
In the end, those praised for "liberating us" from the "colonisers" have led us down the garden path in many instances.
