A community organisation has called on Bermudians to vote for unity and remove the Progressive Labour Party from power on February 18.

Speaking at an event to launch the Emperial Group website, Eugene Dean said the group hoped to help prevent One Bermuda Alliance candidates, Free Democratic Movement candidates and independent candidates from splitting the vote in the upcoming General Election.

“Right now, the situation in Bermuda is very confusing,” he said. “We have literally gone from one extreme to the other.

“Through the leadership vacuum that has been created, people have started to sit up and stand up and now we are to the point where people have begun to get involved.

“Because of the rush to get involved, we have now created another problem that has left the populous confused because when you have three or four options at the polls, what do you do?

“If the vast majority of people in the country agree that we wish to see the current administration removed, then how do you achieve that based on what has happened at the by-elections, where the current administration has received a small fraction of the votes but still managed to maintain their position as a result of the others looking to oppose them taking votes from each other.”

Mr Dean said that the PLP would be re-elected if the opposition parties and independents worked in isolation and failed to collaborate.

“If the goal is to see the current administration removed, then it is everybody’s duty to work together,” he said.

“The Vote 4 Unity campaign expressed on our website is to inspire that action and to make it very clear to the general public that there is a pathway to victory and there is a pathway to achieving the type of leadership that the country is begging for.”

Mr Dean said that the Emperial Group had supported the PLP and pushing youth voter registration. However, after coming to power in 1998 the party had “built a legacy of broken promises”.

“Organisations like Dread and Baha, members of the Emperial Group, spearheaded registration drives and rallied young people to the polls,” he said.

“We were motivated by the hope of a better future, driven by the belief that the government would prioritise the needs of our people, especially the next generation.

“Yet from the moment they assumed power, the PLP abandoned those promises and cut the legs out from under the very groups that made their victory possible.”

Mr Dean accused the PLP of prioritising party loyalty over the people, leading to public disillusionment and division.

“Marc Bean, Renée Webb and others have spoken about the need for a combined, unified opposition, a united force that challenges the PLP’s stronghold and brings meaningful change to Bermuda,” he said.

“As the Emperial Group, we stand ready to lead this change, leveraging our decades of experience and community building, youth empowerment and grassroots advocacy to ensure that the combined opposition presents the people of Bermuda with a credible, viable and unified option at the polls.”

Mr Dean highlighted the history of the Emperial Group showcased on the new website, emperialgroup.org, organising community events such as CultureFest, fighting against violence and bringing Louis Farrakhan to the island.

He accepted that it might be a challenge to bring different political groups together given that candidates have already been unveiled, but said that time would tell.

“It is a difficult conversation to have but we have to understand what the goal is,” he said. “We can all sit here and say we understand what the problem is, but how do we do it?

“If someone comes up with a better plan than what we have put on the table, we are happy to get behind it and support it but up until this point we haven’t seen one.

“If we all agree that working together is in our best interests, then that is what we should ultimately be looking to do.”

A PLP spokesman said that the call for unity “laid bare” that votes for anyone other than the PLP would be a vote for the One Bermuda Alliance.

The spokesman added: “The threat is clear; go to bed with the FDM, Emperial Group, or Sir John Swan's NewBP and wake up with the OBA.”