LTR activists buoyed by poll numbers

By Andrew Clarke

(News from 2000-11-10 Edition)

PROPONENTS of the rights of long-term residents say the results of a recent Bermuda Sun poll add teeth to their campaign to gain status. The results also fly in the face of sentiments expressed at a series of Government- sponsored public forums. The poll, carried out by Walton Brown’s independent firm, Research Innovations Limited, found that slightly more than half (50.6 per cent) of residents were in favour of granting long-term residents full status including the right to vote. Spokesperson for the coalition for long-term residents’ rights, Robert Pires, says that the poll confirmed that the public meetings were far from being democratic and that the views of the country as a whole are not indicative of those expressed at the forums. Skewed results

But Chief Immigration Officer, Martin Brewer, said the polls numbers have skewed the results toward over representing those in favour of granting long-term residents full status.UBP MP and lawyer Trevor Moniz, a long-time advocate for the rights of long-term residents in Bermuda, voiced his concern that Government, despite the poll’s results, would continue to contradict international law by creating second-class citizens out of long-term residents.Government must face up to its moral and public obligations and those of international law, and grant long-term residents with full status, he said. And the fact the previous UBP Government did not take care of the issue does not absolve the PLP from doing it now.

PLP activist and panel member Rolfe Commissiong warned against reading too much into the poll, saying that he suspected the half of the population that did not favour granting status were likely PLP supporters. And because of this, Government is right not to advocate giving the vote to long-term residents. Mr. Pires described the public meetings as a travesty. People who attended the meetings were not given accurate facts, he charged, and as a result they were denied the opportunity of hearing a balanced discussion. The meetings were instead left to emotion and vitriol and hardly based in fact, he said. He stressed that the intimidation fostered by opponents of long-term residents’ rights meant calling the forums democratic was a huge misnomer.

Mr. Pires went on to charge that the first two (of four) meetings were hijacked by hecklers in the audience, while the final two were stacked by pro-PLP panellists. In his view, there should have been more panellists who were of Portuguese heritage, given that by conservative estimates 15 per cent of Bermuda’s population is of Portuguese decent. There was a need to broaden the representative balance (at the meetings), he said. And what we ended up having was an atmosphere of fear perceived fear, of what offering rights to long-term residents would actually mean. Mr. Moniz agreed. He said he was very happy to see that the poll numbers reflected a truer picture of how the community felt about the long-term residents issue. It clearly shows the pundits were wrong.

PLP activist Alvin Williams who, in his weekly Mid Ocean News column had expressed the view that the public meetings were indicative of the country’s sentiment towards long-term residents, pointed out the results do not reflect the bigger picture. I am not going to dispute Mr. Brown’s (poll) numbers, but I do not feel they are indicative of what blacks in general would have to say (about long-term residents), he said. He added that while Bermudians should not blame long-term residents for coming here, the meetings clearly did reflect how blacks had been denied their aspirations by (them) coming to work in Bermuda.Adding that if a foreign worker is not arrogant or racist they stand a good chance of getting along with Bermudians, Mr. Williams urged people to look at the overall picture of how foreigners were used to deny blacks opportunity.Island’s fabric

Foster Burke, a Bermuda resident for 31 years and a native of St. Vincent in the West Indies, disagreed. He said that the guest workers in question (those who arrived before August 1, 1989 and eligible to apply for status prior to Government’s moratorium on future grants) are already on the island and form a part of Bermuda’s fabric. We already have jobs, houses, cars and have been counted as part of the latest census, he said.And to say that long-term residents place added strain on Bermuda is simply wrong. The polls numbers are very interesting, Mr. Foster continued.It certainly gives credence to the fact that a good number of Bermudians would grant us status and we are gratified by that. Mr. Moniz, who pointed out that the European Commission’s code of Human Rights makes it illegal for any country to effectively create two tiers of citizenship, urged Government to put the Progressive back in their name and do what is right by granting long-term residents status.

But Mr. Commissiong disagreed saying the polls numbers should not alter Government’s stated position of not offering full status. Government is right to focus on the option of giving long-term residents greater security of (living) tenure than they currently enjoy — but not the vote. And Mr. Williams expressed his belief that blacks in Bermuda would only embrace the idea of long-term residents having full citizenship when they feel comfortable in their own country.