No better than Saddam

December 2, 2005

Dear Sir,

The Royal Gazette has recently carried many advertisements sponsored by the Bermuda College drawing attention to the fact that the College has many close affiliations with varied educational institutions outside Bermuda. This clearly is an excellent thing as the policy allows many Bermudians to gain credits before embarking on an expensive overseas education.

One of the allied organisations is the University of Kent located in Canterbury, England where Bermudians can work towards a law degree from that University. This arrangement is beneficial to both the College and University and has a good track record.

However, I doubt if the University of Kent law faculty would be impressed by the administrative practices of the Bermuda College. One of the key concepts and fundamentals of a legal education is an understanding of the rule of law.

Briefly, the rule of law enunciates two unequivocal standards of behaviour:

1. Everyone is subject to the law. No matter how important somebody is, and no matter how influential, all are equal before the law. Charles I, King of England lost his head because he thought he was above the law.

2. Anyone charged with an offence, has the right to an impartial hearing where evidence of wrongdoing has to be produced, and the accused can question those who make allegations against him.

The Bermuda College, of course, does not pay attention to such trivia. After all, the self-important people who run the College are far superior to us common souls and when they think that something is wrong they simply use their power to punish the offender. No rubbish about the importance of the two key principles of the rule of law. Like King Charles I, they believe they have a hot-line to God, and they say we are the law, and we answer to no one. I wonder if the University of Kent acts in this way.

No doubt the College authorities would disagree with what I have said. However, when one considers that a College lecturer of 29 years standing was dismissed because of something he said in a private conversation and, with which the authorities did not agree, it is easy to conclude that the rule of law and hence the affiliation with the University of Kent law faculty does not amount to a row of beans.

What the petty tyrants on College Board say is this: “We do not agree with what Dr. O'Connell says, and because of that we will kick him out without an impartial hearing - we do not have to follow any rules because we run this place in any way we want.”

Because the University of Kent is in England and is unlikely to pay attention to a local matter, the College governors are banking on the fact that they can act with impunity even though they are undermining one of the glorious bedrocks of our civilisation.

In addition to this, since 1997 the College also boasts that it houses the “Bermuda International Commercial Arbitration Centre” - a mechanism for resolving commercial disputes according to the principles of law.

It is absurd for an institution that pays no attention to legal principles to hold itself out to the rest of the world as being an impartial administrator of legal principles for international trade. Only a bunch of academic fools believes that you can say one thing in public but yet do another in private on such an important matter as this.

The miscarriage of justice that occurred in the Sean O'Connell case is a disgrace to the people of Bermuda, but yet we, the public, allow a hypocritical educational institution to pretend to the world, and to itself, that it is a centre of legal learning. This is a truly astonishing contradiction between practice and image.

The Bermuda College Board has behaved in a way that would be a credit to Saddam Hussein. Throughout the ages budding dictators have relied on the fact that the public is too gullible, or too preoccupied with its own affairs, or too afraid to speak out, that they can get away with anything they want. They rely on our docility.

We have a Human Rights Commission, an Ombudsman, and a host of other Government sponsored organisations all of which, sadly give the impression that they are facades to camouflage unaccountable behaviour by those in authority.

I do not want to make any parallel between Nazi Germany and Bermuda College because they are like chalk and cheese, but it is worthwhile to recall the words of the German Pastor Martin Niemoller of 70 years ago:

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

“Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

If we allow a bunch of wowsers and snouters, who pretend to be the guardians of academic freedom, to get away with this outrage we are only storing up trouble for ourselves in the future. Bermuda is not a banana republic, but the behaviour of the Bermuda College Board is seeking to put us in that league by its hypocrisy and by undermining our legal system.

Dr. O'Connell deserves an impartial hearing of the sort we give to common criminals. A failure to do that means that we are no better than people like Saddam Hussein.

ROBERT STEWART

Smith's Parish