well established as the preferred form of democracy in most current and former British colonies.

Two recent landslide election results in the Caribbean demonstrate the system's weaknesses more than its strengths.

The governing parties in Barbados and Grenada last week received massive majorities (26-2 and 15-0 respectively) in their legislatures despite the fact that in both countries, the opposition received one-third or more of the vote.

The Westminster system's strength is that it will usually assure a Country of a working Parliamentary majority and stable government, thus avoiding the weakness of proportional representation, where coalition government is the norm and countries can be held hostage by small parties holding the balance of power.

The weakness of the Westminster system is that it tends to distort victories and defeats, as in Barbados and Grenada.

Bermuda is not immune. In the November election in Bermuda, the Progressive Labour Party won 55 percent of the vote, but 65 percent of the seats. And many will recall that Sir John Swan's United Bermuda Party won 31 out of 40 seats (77 percent of the seats) with the backing of 62 percent of the electorate in 1985.

Large majorities carry their own risks. Government arrogance in the absence of a strong Opposition is likely and party discipline is inevitably weak. Those were problems for the 1985-1989 Swan Government and in some ways sowed the seeds for the UBP's eventual defeat last November.

These weaknesses are important for Bermuda, where the Government plans to work towards converting the Island's two seat constituencies to one-seat districts and to reduce the number of seats in the House of Assembly to 30.

The PLP has long complained about the uneven distribution of voters in Bermuda constituencies, believing it gave the UBP an overwhelming number of safe seats. To some extent the last Election put the lie to that theory, but there should be little doubt that the PLP will push forward with its plans for Election reforms anyway.

Leaving aside the question of whether Constitutional reform is possible before Independence, this could result in the PLP gaining more strongholds as the old parish boundaries are breached. But the PLP should remember that substituting one Westminster system for another (or one form of "gerrymandering'' for another) is not necessarily healthy and, given this opportunity, the PLP could "go outside the box'' and look at other forms of electoral reform.

A mix of proportional representation and first past the post, similar to the proposals British Prime Minister Tony Blair is considering for the United Kingdom, might be the answer for Bermuda. If such a system ensured a more representative form of government while assuring a degree of stability, it would be a lasting legacy for the Island.