“Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn’t happen.”

— Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

In advance of winning the General Election last Tuesday, David Burt pledged that a Progressive Labour Party government would put greater emphasis on collaboration. The One Bermuda Alliance, while losing heavily at the polls, was far from ineffectual when it came to handling the people’s business. Still, the OBA lost the election because it lost the people. And in accepting defeat, Michael Dunkley, the outgoing premier, publicly encouraged all the country to stand behind the new government in moving Bermuda forward.

So, with election euphoria still in the air — witness the reception for Burt at the Eastern Counties Cup first round in St David’s on Saturday — and the ink of officialese barely dry on the appointment of the Premier’s first Cabinet and Senate members, it is disconcerting to see the seeds for the new government’s demise being planted before it has got to work in earnest.

From within.

As a chief rival in the world of international business, it is unsurprising that the Cayman Islands would seek to pounce on any uncertainties that come about from a change in government. Hence, the Cayman Compass editorial titled “Bermuda: an island in troubled waters”, which in part referred to our own opinion of July 19.

It is correct to recall that the previous PLP government left the country’s finances in a state of disrepair, and it is correct to state that the OBA arrested that decline and then began to turn around the economy through a series of initiatives, not the least through the America’s Cup, the upsurge in tourism and groundbreaking on a new hotel in St George’s.

But for failure effectively to be projected by one of our own Bermudian business leaders before the PLP even steps foot in the newly refurbished Cabinet Office is disappointing at best, seditious at worst.

Robert Pires is among those with whom collaboration should be sought. His opinion is respected and his longevity as chief executive officer of Bermuda Investment Advisory Services suggests that he is good at what he does.

It is then not in the country’s best interest that he has given a rival ammunition with which to beat us — and thus lower our global standing potentially in the eyes of many.

His assertions when talking to former Bermuda Sun reporter James Whittaker for the Cayman Compass analysis titled “Bermuda election result could impact Cayman”, and which are pockmarked with “antagonistic” references to the PLP, may indeed prove to be correct.

But only over time. Not now.

Now is the time for collaboration; the time for Burt to put his money — ours, essentially — where his mouth is.

He and the PLP can do that only if the likes of Pires, also a fierce proponent for Pathways to Status, at least agree to start the conversation in the same room, and not in one almost 1,500 miles to our southwest, where the prospect of the Bermuda economy sinking into the Atlantic without a trace would be met with raucous celebration.