Vexed Bermoothes

Well that didn’t take long.  Just days into 2010 and we already have a road fatality and an execution style murder.

Not much word from Dr. Brown on Bermuda’s sudden violence, furthering his reputation of only stepping in front of the cameras when there’s good news to spin.

However, Col Burch is finally saying the right things, including addressing the perpetual problem of small communities where people are hesitant to call the authorities with information that can stop wrongdoers and wrongdoing.  He says:

We have to be willing to identify wrong, to stand up and denounce evil. We have to be prepared to draw a line in the sand determining what we — as a community — will not accept …

Our community is under siege because we didn’t want to get involved – but it is past time to get involved …

Of course, there is more that can be done, Bermuda is too small not to have all our citizens playing their full role in society.

He’s right, and I give him credit for trying to claw back some of the authority that the PLP has wasted away on law and order issues.  It’s not easy because on one side he asks people to act as witnesses … and on the other acknowledges these are our sons, cousins, nephews … and for some parliamentarians that’s not just empty talk … some of whom are carrying weapons.  It is even harder to ask for the community to be accountable when the PLP itself has been so evasive on the issue of accountability.

I don’t think I am being too uncharitable in pointing out that this same community inertia has protected the PLP through their own 10 years of misadventures.  The voters have given the PLP the “he was a nice boy who was turning his life around and loved his kids” treatment time and time again when the evidence has been clear that not everything is working as it should.  We witness the lapses, the defiant evasions, and the lame excuses … and we quickly change the subject and pretend that everything is platinum.

Ceola Wilson sums it up well in her editorial:  silence is consent.  That goes for bad public behaviour as well as bad political behaviour.

UPDATE:  Politics.bm expands on the subject of how the PLP used crime as a political lever both during the last election and more recently in their squabbles with the Governor over control of the Police – allowing the problem to escalate untended.