A useful reminder, in advance of tomorrow’s vote on the no confidence motion:
- He failed to involve the UK in the discussions with the US over the transfer of the Guantanamo detainees, in violation of section 62 of Bermuda’s Constitution.
- With the exception of David Burch, he failed to tell his own Cabinet what he was doing. Because of collective responsibility, this meant members of Cabinet had to publicly support his decision without having been given any opportunity to change it.
- He failed to get a security assessment of the men done prior to their arrival in Bermuda. Instead, he chose to rely on the assessment of the Americans, which could not be assumed to be impartial.
- He told parliament that the Commissioner of Police had concluded that the detainees posed absolutely no risk to Bermuda. The Commissioner later contradicted him, saying he had not been given sufficient information to make any judgment. So either the Premier lied to parliament, or he failed to verify that a security assessment had been done. The former would be gross dishonesty, the latter would be gross negligence.
And those are just the reasons relating to the Guantanamo detainees.
Every Bermudian (and spouse of a Bermudian) who thinks Ewart Brown is bad for Bermuda needs to be at the protest at the House at noon tomorrow. The PLP backbenchers are wavering, tempted to put personal interest before the good of Bermuda, and the erratic Wayne Furbert can hardly be relied upon either.
The vote on the no confidence motion isn’t expected until the afternoon or early evening. A large, mixed race crowd at the protest could really make a difference to how this turns out.
If you could be at the protest tomorrow, but choose not to go, perhaps because you can’t be bothered, perhaps because you’re worried about what you friends or family might say about you, you will bear partial responsibility if the Premier succeeds in clinging on to power.
The Premier is getting bolder with every successive power play. First he was just refusing to answer questions because they were “plantation questions”. Then he spent taxpayers’ money going to the Privy Council in a vain (in both senses of the word) attempt to prevent the press revealing potentially damaging information about his role in the BHC affair. Then he stopped all Government advertising in the Royal Gazette. Then he announced he would be reducing contact with them. Now he has broken Bermuda’s Constitution, damaged our relationship with the UK, and behaved in a cavalier fashion with our national security. How is he going to top that? When will Bermuda say “enough is enough”?
