The Free Democratic Movement, a third-party challenger ahead of the 2020 General Election, will return to the political fray, its founder told the Daily Hour broadcast talk show.

Marc Bean, a former leader of the Progressive Labour Party who retired from politics in 2016, said that he had not quit politics — and had courted members of the ruling party and the One Bermuda Alliance who were “sick and tired” of the race-based status quo in Bermuda politics.

He added that the FDM stood to appeal to “the large middle ground of swing voters”.

The remarks came after a hard assessment of the PLP and its leadership, with Mr Bean maintaining that the ruling party’s leadership used “sleight of hand” as a distraction from real issues while the party as a whole has “strayed” from the core tenets of its founders.

“Unless there is a change of course, then it’s going to be extremely detrimental,” he said.

Mr Bean, who revealed that he was soon to turn 50 and had just welcomed another child with his wife, Simone, did not specify when the FDM might “re-emerge” — and did not commit to leading the party.

He added: “But I know my job as architect is to build it.”

The maverick party, which, Mr Bean conceded, had appeared to go “dormant” since 2020, was cast as the only viable option for voters to break the island free of race-based politics.

Mr Bean avoided naming anyone in his attack on his former party’s performance in government.

While he ruled out returning to the PLP, he added: “It’s not because I do not have a love for the people within the PLP.”

He added: “Bermuda needs to mature.

“Our political environment needs to mature. Right now, as long you have the OBA and what they represent still in the mix, then they actually still serve a supreme interest or benefit to the PLP.”

He said that the PLP “can’t really exist” without the “bogeyman” of the OBA or the former ruling United Bermuda Party, which disbanded in 2011.

Mr Bean insisted that race was being used “to keep people divided and separated”.

“The Free Democratic Movement was created recognising this fact.”

The FDM garnered votes in 2020 but failed to win seats, although Mr Bean said at the time that it would continue to strengthen.

“While the FDM has apparently been dormant, that’s all from a strategic and tactical reason,” he told the Daily Hour.

“But the time is going to come. What I would like to see in the future is for a government in waiting to be created.

“The OBA does not have the capacity to do that, I am just going to be frank.”

Mr Bean called the Opposition party a “UBP derivative” and said it would never regain the Government after its single term.

“Once bitten, twice shy,” he said. “But, at the same time, people are seeking alternatives.”

The interview opened with Mr Bean returning to his contention from last month that the Government’s proposal for the island to move to full membership of the Caribbean Community was “a distraction”.

He said that the party had lost its way from the values of its early days when it confronted overt racism and its mandate to stick up for the oppressed.

“It’s not that they have ideologically strayed in a big sense, but in terms of actions and behaviour, they have strayed.”

Mr Bean also said the ruling party would get a 50 per cent grade in a “litmus test of government and governance”.

He added: “I am not impressed or happy with what I see. Ultimately the people are suffering, and that’s not the reason why the current Government was voted in.”

Mr Bean also said voters had themselves to blame if they failed to hold their leaders to account at the polls.

Mr Bean credited Lieutenant-Colonel David Burch, the public works minister, for coming clean when projects in his ministry failed to work out as planned.

“Back in the day, that’s something you would see, I guess, a little bit more often.”

Mr Bean, who was voted in as leader of the PLP in the wake of its narrow electoral defeat by the OBA in December 2012, said he had immediately moved to change the party’s “attitude and behaviour” under the slogan “Clean hands and a pure heart”.

However, he told interviewer Jamel Hardtman, he had faced opposition from within the party up until his retirement, with a narrative put out that he was “bitter and angry”.