Activist and veteran politician Rolfe Commissiong (File photo by Akil Simmons)
First of all, I never believed that the Prime Minister – a man who an older relative of mine, who was on the front lines of Bermuda’s racial and civil rights battles, once described as “Rolfe seemed a bit weak” – had any intention of pursuing Independence regardless of how it was evoked, on speculation or leaks two years ago that the Governor would not assent to the then-pending cannabis bill. Even then, most people had a choice to label that curious announcement as naive or terribly cynical. I would take the latter.
As expected, led by Bermuda’s Anglo community and those black Bermudians who emulate them, racist paranoia raced like clockwork with a distinct “locals are concerned” expression much of the public comment. Again, I postulate, but what country in modern history suddenly goes independent because of a failed attempt to win royal assent for a cannabis bill?
This contrasts with the response to speculation about the proposed cannabis bill last year before it was tendered. They are now running desperately in the other direction using terms such as self-government when it is clear that they are now, as expected, only looking to claw back some extra power from the colonial power in the United Kingdom. In other words, independence without Independence.
Further evidence that this was all a cynical exercise in political marketing – his chief talent – was the fact that about a year ago at the same time the Central Committee of the Progressive Labor Party spent more than an hour successfully getting a the motion. passed which would essentially prohibit the official use at party or government level of relevant members using or applying the word Independence when representing the party or government publicly.
Instead, if they were clever, only the term sovereignty could be used. You can’t make these things up. Then that’s all you’ve heard even from MPs like Walter Roban who should know better. Everyone parrots this term in the hope that those who are against Independence would not get too upset with them using the supposedly independence-promoting term.
Most people who have studied the matter know that constitutionally a country or colony cannot achieve sovereignty without first achieving Independence. And to achieve full sovereignty, they would then have to declare themselves a republic, which in our case, as recently happened in Barbados, would remove the monarch of the United Kingdom, King Charles III, and replace him , as is the case in Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados, Guyana, Suriname have done – just to refer to the Caricom region – with a Bermuda citizen as President and as head of state.
So we went from talking about Independence in the blink of an eye to using the term sovereignty, in the past now to the overwhelming label of self-government.
I led the delegation of the Bermuda Independence Commission that entered into discussions with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2006. That delegation consisted of Dame Lois Brown Evans, who delegated that leadership to me and which I considered an honor to special. Black business leader Donna Pearman was the third member of that delegation. And as former Prime Minister W. Alex Scott, who had the foresight and courage to create BIC, knows all too well, nothing has changed in that time.
The British then, as now, will not give up any of the core powers outlined in the constitutional order they imposed on us decades ago in 1967, if only because it leaves them vulnerable to contingent liabilities. If the Prime Minister and Kathy Lynn Simmons, the Attorney-General, believe that the UK will go beyond the delegation of their powers by signing trusts, say in the area of internal security and foreign affairs, they are kidding themselves. with myself.
But of course the prime minister, the cynic, already knows this. Similarly, at the other end of the political spectrum, the British have historically always refused – unlike the constitutional model of the French who have fully integrated their overseas territories as an integral constitutional part of the French state – to do the same. So for example, both Martinique and Guadeloupe send elected members to the French assembly. The two Caribbean islands are seen as constituent departments of France….
So what’s left? A governor born in Bermuda? No, a vanity at best. The most you will get is what you have now, a black governor, but a British one. Clearly, either this or Independence. I don’t fault Mr. Corbin and his efforts. I first met him decades ago and he is very well qualified to produce what he produced. The fault lies with a generation of leaders in the PLP who do not know Bermuda’s history, including black history. They don’t even really support Independence – except in rhetoric when it’s appropriate – but feel they should act as if they do.
Because if they supported Independence, they would argue for it and not settle for this kind of political obfuscation and cultural schizophrenia – another example of Mr Burt kicking the can down the road yet again. He’s thrown so many cans down the street, including a living wage, that it’s hard to keep track of them.
If we were serious about Independence, immediately after the 2017 election we would have put in place the systemic changes that are a necessary precursor to a more stable, equal and united independent Bermuda. The public policies that I have accused Mr. Burt of paving the way for over the past six years are the same ones that underlie the kinds of long-overdue systemic changes that are precursors to independence.
That is what they should be focusing on, not this exercise in technocratic arrogance as an empty substitute for real leadership.
The only thing I would probably agree with in this regard is the fact that I too believe that the constitutional and political framework originally set up in the mid-late 1960s reached the end of its lifespan in the 2020 election, where over 10,000 voters who had voted in 2017 had disappeared from the ballot just three years later. The PLP lost over 4,000 voters who did not turn up at the polls with the OBA seeing a further 5,000 drop in support.
We need a reset and I believe it is within reach over the next two election cycles, but I doubt this process will be kind to either the PLP or the OBA (UBP), both of which were born during that period of the 1960s.
The other key thing that is still relevant today that came out of our discussions with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London as members of the Bermuda Independence Commission was the UK’s considered view that if Bermuda decided either through a referendum or the process of general election to become an independent nation, they would not sign it at a later constitutional conference in the absence of a decision to grant citizenship to all long-term residents.
Bermudians need to understand that status is not citizenship, which is another term, as our politicians are prone to misuse. Ultimately, this may be a way to reconcile the still-open wounds surrounding the issue of immigration as it relates to Black Bermudians. Immigration was racialized and weaponized by the UBP from the late 1960s to the late 1980s with the granting of status grants to overwhelmingly white Anglo migrants, so that Black Bermudians of my parents’ generation and mine were marginalized for in terms of opportunities with society.
Today’s immigrants, however, have a legitimate expectation that they should be able to secure their long-term future on the island, but only, in my view, within the context of a new constitutional and political resettlement of Bermuda along the lines that my political mentor LF Wade presented shortly before his untimely death.
Unlike some on the island, there are those who routinely claim that Independence is not necessary because we now live in an interdependent world. They neglect to mention that while it is an interdependent world, it is composed of independent nations that make decisions in their own interest and are free to do so without the interference of foreign powers asserting their prerogatives from over 3,000 miles away. .
