Premier Paula Cox has defended her party’s record following harsh criticism from Opposition Deputy Leader Senator Michael Dunkley.In a statement in the Progressive Labour Party’s newsletter, the Premier accuses Sen Dunkley of rewriting history by saying that the PLP’s governance over the last 13 years had set the country’s progress back 400 years.“As the leader of this Government I refuse to sit by and allow a man bitter with the fact that he sits outside the halls of power to malign this Government and its track record,” the Premier told her party newsletter.“We are where we are for a reason and Bermudians that suffered under 35 years of UBP Government policies focused not on the people, but on business and indirectly the furtherance of a balance of power which saw large family owned businesses get larger, and ensured their future generations status in the community.”Premier Cox also noted the “clear divide between the have’s and the have nots,” between the races and between “the business owners and the employees.“These last 13 years of PLP Government have not yet erased all the ills of the past, but over this time there has clearly been a push for equality and a shifting of the formerly very skewed economic pie.”She goes on to list the expansion of the Economic Empowerment Zone, Child Day Care allowance benefit, concessions to businesses and employees, and regulations allowing people to access their pensions as among the PLP’s achievements.“The work is far from finished, and I can tell you the voters I’ve spoken to don’t want rhetoric, and politrix,” the Premier is quoted as saying. “These voters don’t want their representatives to be media hogs. What they want is honesty from their leadership. They want hard work from their leadership, and they want to know that their views, the people’s views, not just those privileged enough to come from a line of business owners, but those hard working men and women struggling to maintain their role as employees, are heard and acted on.”