Governor to convene an inquiry into the postponement of the August 15 Independence Referendum. The job of the commission will be "to inquire into the circumstances and the events which occurred on Tuesday, August 15, which led to the postponement of the Referendum on Independence to August 16 and to make any recommendations arising therefrom''.

It is very clear that by August 15 the public had had enough in every sense of the Referendum debate and wanted the issue settled and done with so that we could all get on with Bermuda's business. A long delay of the referendum would have further disrupted the Country to no purpose.

In the days immediately after the Referendum on Independence, the Country was full of rumours about acts which were and were not supposed to have taken place. There are reports of people who were supposedly "in the know'' going around during the early morning of August 15 saying quite openly that the Referendum was being delayed until December. To allow some of the reports to go unexplored would be unwise and damaging to the individuals involved.

Then too there are legal issues. At least two members of Parliament sought help from the Supreme Court to get the Referendum completed. We have a right to expect that the law takes its course. The Referendum was covered by a law enacted by Parliament. It should not have been necessary for MPs who are lawyers to have to go to Court in order to be certain that the law would be observed.

Therefore we think it is entirely sensible that Bermuda should have an inquiry into the events of August 15 and the delay of the Referendum until August 16.

There are continuing reports of a good deal of bad behaviour on August 15 and it is best to sort the matter out and put it behind us. From the new Government's point of view, we would think a clean start would be welcome. We have been promised a more open Government. If the public thinks there has been a cover-up, then the problem will only fester.

Clearly the Governor, Lord Waddington, is a man who believes in sorting out problems. He made exactly the right decision to take a close look at the Police Service and found the right people to do the job. In a similar way, we think he has chosen the correct person in Mister Justice Telford Georges to chair the Referendum inquiry. As a Bermuda Appeal Court judge, Mister Justice Georges was highly respected as a judge who "gets things right''. This inquiry is a distinguished panel, including as it does City of Hamilton Councillor Miss Sonia Grant and retired Financial Secretary Dr. Walwyn Hughes.

The referendum debate has already done Bermuda a great deal of damage. The results prove that opinion polls showed the correct answers and could have been followed. Instead, Bermuda was subjected to the disruption of a referendum. The issue of who did what when the referendum was delayed lingers on. It is time now to clear the air because there is work to be done.