December 18, 2012Dear Sir,The pundits are already proffering reasons why the 2012 Bermuda Election ended with an impressive One Bermuda Alliance win over the Progressive Labour Party. It is true that the economy, jobs, threats to healthcare, pensions, and public security etc all factored into the decisions of voters, to a greater or lesser degree. However important these issues, they are not the ultimate reason why the PLP suffered such a humiliating defeat, with its leader losing her seat and its strongholds reduced to marginals.In short the PLP, under the influence of aggrandising elites, morphed into a self-serving politically partisan machine, which many voters believed was blind and deaf to them and to their pressing needs. It would seem the elites in the PLP were perceived to be engaged in an all out race to the bottom, in an attempt to best the then United Bermuda Party oligarchs in a cynically exploitive game of divide and conquer, with the victors claiming the assets of the state to be disposed of according to their self-serving expectations. In short the PLP lost because it sacrificed the electorate’s hopes and dreams and pressing needs on the alter of its self-serving expectations. It cannot be lost on the leaders of OBA that the UBP was consigned to the trash heap of history because of the cynical use of race in a similar self-serving endeavour. They were United in one thing only, the cynical exploitation of race to maintain an oligarchical, white political, economic and social hegemony.The OBA have to be congratulated for rising like a phoenix from the ashes of UBP ignominy. However, if like their crash and burn predecessor, the PLP (who far from standing strong, crashed in their corrosive self-serving weakness) the OBA take the electorate for granted and do not put their needs and concerns at the centre of all policy decisions, their miraculous rise will carry the seed germ of their inevitable fall. This highlights the need for an approach to governance that embraces a broader and more inclusive consensus, centred not on partisan party hacks, but on the electorate. That synergy of cooperation, especially of today’s younger and less myopic electorate must embrace progressive and more centrist political forces, who distain inequity and social exclusion, and all immoral social mechanisms, and who appreciate the need for a more compassionate and sustainable social order. In the absence of such a broad consensus there will be no good social, political or economic outcomes, just more victims of deeply partisan elitist self-serving politricks.The urgent mobilisation of all these forces for good should begin by soliciting the most suitably qualified Bermudians to serve on Government Boards and as advisers, irrespective of party affiliations. In the silence of the polling booth the electorate have spoken, and without uttering a single word, they made a simple mark on a ballot and emphatically insisted the days of the divisive politricks of fear are over. A mighty crash was heard in the wilderness of self-serving partisan political ambitions but the electorate’s world did not come to an end! The inglorious fall of the PLP signals one sure thing — the OBA will be brought down, quicker than it stood up, by an ignored, fed up electorate devoid of yesterday’s fears.STUART LAMBERTSt David’s