In the local blogosphere, which admittedly is dominated by white males (through nobody's fault, just the way it's been), the political talk as relates to the General Election deals a lot with corruption allegations and BHC scandals.
However, these issues, huge as they may be, perhaps are overblown when it comes to how relevant it is to the black population overall. I was speaking with friends recently and the impression I get is that many black folks are tired of hearing about BHC and court costs and cedar beams. To them, it doesn't matter. It could be a matter of apathy or that they're really more concerned about getting truly affordable housing or how their kids are educated.
To the swing voters, who'll be majority black with fair amounts of whites and other racial groups, they're going to vote for their UBP or PLP candidate based on the more concrete issues, I think. Regarding the current Premier's reputation, that's going to matter more to the diehard supporters. Just my opinions early on.
2 comments:
Thanks for the perspective... I view the BHC as fundamental, as when they tried to do something involving affordable housing the politicians instead mismanaged it and allegedly stole from it...
But then I see an inability by the bulk of the senior members of the PLP to make sensible, educated decisions about a wide range of topics as being wholly self-evident, but I suppose that comes from having some background information.
I agree with most of your assessment, but the sad thing is, things like the BHC should matter to blacks, and all Bermudians(cedar beams, not so much), as it is corruption, embezzlement and the miss-spending of millions of dollars that is going to directly affect their ability to get affordable housing or the quality of their children's education. Taxes will need to be raised to cover the poor money management and theft, which will affect the cost of goods, service, and rent. Budget cuts will affect how much they can spend on education. Millions of dollars have been miss-spent or 'missplaced', how many people in trouble could that have helped? Everything the government does matters as it has a trickledown effect across the whole island.
But like you said it may be apathy, confusion, "I know it is bad, but what can I do?", and with the race card being flung around so freely, scare-mongering and smearing from both sides, race is the easiest to grasp on to and hope for the best. It is really unfortunate and really not good for the island.
I have posted in several other places my thoughts on this, but the UBP following is mostly white because there little other choice for whites, it has been hammered in to white Bermudians that the PLP have no use for them and their opinion doesn't matter. Their candidates are a good representation of the island's racial make up and I would love to see more black Bermudians involved with the UBP from a membership perspective, they need all the help they can get to grasp the problems that they are being told they don't understand and to come up with solutions that really work for everyone.
So I guess my TLDR response is I agree with you, the swing voters need to care and need to stand up and vote on issues and not the party or race. But once that party is in care enough to hold them accountable for every single promise and don't let up.
Post a Comment