March 13, 2014

Dear Sir,

There seems to be a disconnection between One Bermuda Alliance the organisation and OBA the government. The OBA organisation came together because of a vision of being the new generation of politics, beyond the old paradigm of racial and class polarisation. However, the same disconnect we saw between the Progressive Labour Party government and the ideals which its party was supposed to be representing as a people’s party. In both cases we ended up with a parliamentary oligarch ruling the neutered parties and their supporters.

I can see on the faces of persons who were excited to be a part of something new that they believed would take Bermuda to a new level for everyone. The accusation is becoming clearer by the day that instead of an Alliance — they have an autocratic rule by a group of politicians and hidden mentors set to gobble every aspect of the country with narcissistic self-interest. This is not what the rank and file members of the OBA want or the electorate that put them in.

We don’t have the luxury of years to wait and see if they will change from a course that seems clearly out of step with a middle course to the average eye. Not in the name of expediency or fixing the economy should we wake up to find that we have become beggars sitting outside the mainstream of the economy in our own country.

We sat for at-least six years while under the financial leadership of Minister and then Premier Paula Cox, giving her smile a chance but what did that bring us? If we let these three-piece suits deceive us into a comfort, just as we found ourselves in debt, we will find the country into a state of social chaos with a new glass ceiling and a wider gap pinning forever an economic underclass.

What to do? The real OBA has a moral obligation to stand up and dissociate from a bunch of parliamentarians. They at least owe that, because otherwise they will be a lame duck organisation as a consequence of doing nothing. I would beg, implore, demonstrate, do whatever it takes to cause significant resignations. We need to place a few new individuals in between these two parties and create a new government selected from the best from each side.

If we love our country, we need to install an interim government for four years that can hold the country and parliament together while we fix the country and the economy as a united effort. We would change the Senate also by removing party loyalty in favour of country first, with the kind of professionals the country needs at this moment to guide us through a difficult period. I could not sugar coat our situation with benign suggestions. The pill may be bitter but far sweeter than the result that will come from doing nothing.

KHALID WASI