passing. The Bermuda of the future, at least the Bermuda of the immediate future because they too will grow old, belongs to young Bermudians and basically to young black Bermudians.

No one represents that future more than Premier Pamela Gordon.

In a Christmas letter to voters she asked them to look to Bermuda's future and said, "Set our sights on a year that brings an even higher standard of living to every Bermudian. Focus on Bermuda's valuable heritage and record of expanding opportunity. Build upon and rejoice in the talent, energy and success of the Bermudian people.'' Those three sentences are very true and what they say was not easy to attain.

The remarkable success of this tiny country was no accident and can be directly attributed to the successes of Pamela Gordon's predecessors in the United Bermuda Party over the past 30 years.

Sir Henry Tucker set the standard for unity and brought brave blacks who were often much maligned to the forefront with his United Bermuda Party. Sir Edward Richards solidified the political gains of black Bermudians. Sir John Sharpe gave the Country a social conscience and a liberal outlook which is hard to equal. Sir David Gibbons built an economy for the world to envy and for the Bermudian people to enjoy. Sir John Swan's political magic was his ability to build a consensus among the people to take Bermuda forward.

With the help of her younger team, especially Jerome Dill, David Dodwell and Grant Gibbons, Pamela Gordon has the ability, the vision and the opportunity to take Bermuda into a new era of success. Bermudians must stop dwelling on the sins of the past and the mistakes of our forefathers and move to the future as Bermudians.

Our Premier will need more than anything else to get past the confinement of the past.

The old order is passing but not fast enough, and the Premier is still burdened with older men who have made valuable contributions but who lived under standards which divided Bermuda racially, socially and politically.

Those are the people who agreed to political strictures which "kept people in their place'' and made it almost impossible to advance if you deviated from the structure.

Those days have to be put behind us yet there are still very obvious signs that older forces in the UBP are rigid and unyielding and will stop at nothimg to demean and destroy those, even friends, who are prone to disagree, to criticise, to speak their minds. Those forces and the people who create them must become the past or they will endanger the future which younger leaders can give us. Pamela Gordon understood that when she said in her Christmas letter, "Let us show our very best to one another and treat each other with respect.'' This is a good, solid, prosperous Country, blessed by God. The average Bermudian is a good person, hard working, caring, independent of spirit and in love with Bermuda. That person does not want political acrimony, dirty tricks, or the divisions of the past. That person wants a good and stable future for their children and their grand-children.

If we will pull together as Bermudians Pamela Gordon will be correct when she said in her letter, "An even brighter future is just ahead.''