The Progressive Labour Party yesterday defended its choice of a convicted bank robber as its candidate in an upcoming by-election.

PLP leader Mr. Frederick Wade yesterday set aside the past of 37-year-old Mr.

Rolfe Patton Commissiong, named as the PLP's candidate for Paget East on Thursday, and warmly welcomed him into the PLP ranks as a role model for young Bermudians who have gone astray.

"He is an example to young black Bermudians of how you can have a bad patch in your life and get beyond that patch and move on to bigger and better things,'' Mr. Wade said in an interview yesterday.

Mr. Commissiong served more than five years of an eight-year prison sentence after admitting in 1984 to robbing the Southampton Princess branch of the Bank of Butterfield at gunpoint. Court testimony at the time reported he had taken $30,000 cash and nearly $6,000 in traveller's cheques. A gun was also fired during the robbery over the head of one of the tellers.

Mr. Commissiong said at the time that he had committed the robbery not for financial gain but to "pave the way for democratic change in Bermuda'' and called himself a "prisoner of conscience.'' "I await your sentence for you must do your duty as I have striven to do mine. But as of my action, time will eventually vindicate me,'' Mr.

Commissiong said at his sentencing in May, 1984. "It is my fervent belief that one day a free and independent nation will arise and take its place amongst the nations of the world, a nation not based upon the economic dictatorship of a rich and powerful elite, but rather a more human and equitable system of government.'' Mr. Wade yesterday pointed to Mr. Commissiong's employment with the law firm Hall and Associates as an assistant controller and paralegal as an example of how he has turned his life around.

In a twist of irony, Mr. Commissiong now works with both the lawyer who sent him to prison in 1984, Mr. Robin McMillan, and the lawyer who defended him, Mr. Michael Scott.

"By his own boot straps, he has pulled his life back together,'' Mr. Wade said yesterday. "We're very proud of him and we stand by him 100 percent.'' In an interview yesterday with The Royal Gazette , Mr. Commissiong said that he has "grown and evolved'' since the time of the robbery. "I have matured,'' he said.

"Most Bermudians are well aware of my past and the things that have gone on in my life in the past 15 years,'' he said.

"Most, if not all, are very supportive of what I'm trying to do now and are behind me 100 percent. And I'm grateful,'' Mr. Commissiong said.

He said many of his political and philosophical beliefs were born of the climate of the riots of the 1960s and '70s.

"I just put my head down and did what I had to do to survive and put my views across,'' he said, adding that his recent work stands as a record of how he has changed since the time of the robbery.