[Opinion column written by Opposition Leader Ben Smith]
How many times have we driven overseas, followed the GPS, only to miss an exit, or turn too early, and end up heading in the wrong direction?
And if you’re old enough to remember, the odds of getting lost were greater when you used an old fashioned paper map!
It can be frustrating, and time consuming when you get lost on the road. And when travelling in a group, there’s always one person who declares, ‘I knew you were making a mistake!’—to the annoyance of the rest of you in the car.
After driving around for a while, eventually someone will ask a simple question: “Are we finally headed in the right direction?”
For more than nine years, the Premier has been driving the Government. During that time, others have sat beside him, helping take decisions and sharing responsibility for the direction being taken. Others have remained on the backbench, largely silent as the journey continued.
They may not have agreed on every decision or carried the same responsibilities, but they have all been in the same car.
We know there will soon be a change of driver.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the car changes direction.
Whoever takes the wheel will still have to form a Cabinet largely from the same parliamentary team that has governed Bermuda for nearly a decade. A change at the top doesn’t erase the journey so far or the problems that remain.
There have been achievements during those years, and they should be recognised. But there are also conversations Bermudians have been having for a very long time.
Can my children afford to stay here?
Where am I going to live?
Why does everything cost so much?
Will our education system adequately prepare the youth for the future?
Why does it take so long to get basic things done?
These aren’t questions invented by politicians. They are conversations taking place around dinner tables, at work, in grocery stores and between parents watching their children consider whether their future might be somewhere else.
After nearly 10 years, it is reasonable to ask why so many of them remain unanswered.
That is where leadership matters.
We have been hearing a great deal about integrity lately. It is an important word, but I think we sometimes make it more complicated than it needs to be.
For me, integrity means telling people the truth.
Not only the part that makes a good headline.
Give people enough information to understand what is really happening. If something isn’t working, say so. If you took the wrong decision, admit it and change it.
I learned that lesson long before entering politics.
I have spent much of my life coaching young people. You can write the best training programme, set ambitious goals and work extremely hard, but sometimes the result still isn’t what you expected.
When that happens, pretending everything is fine doesn’t make the swimmer faster.
You look at what happened.
Maybe the plan was wrong. Maybe the execution wasn’t good enough. Maybe you were concentrating on the wrong thing.
Then you adjust.
I don’t see why government should be different.
A strategy can be announced. Money can be allocated. A committee can be formed and a programme launched.
None of that tells us whether the problem was solved.
The person looking for an affordable home doesn’t care how many meetings were held about housing. They want to know whether there is somewhere they can afford to live.
A parent doesn’t measure education reform by how many times the structure of the system changes. They want to know whether their child is learning and being prepared for life.
Someone looking for work wants an opportunity, not an announcement about one.
That is the difference between activity and results.
When something falls behind, tell people. Explain what happened and what is being done about it. When a policy doesn’t produce the result expected, change it.
That isn’t weakness.
It is how you improve.
Opposition has to live by that standard too.
It is easy to point at what is wrong when someone else is responsible for fixing it. If we say something isn’t working, we should be prepared to explain what we would do differently.
And if Government does something that genuinely benefits Bermuda, we should be capable of saying so.
Most importantly, if I expect Government to admit mistakes, publish results and be judged on what it delivers, Bermudians should expect exactly the same from me and my team.
There is another reason I believe Bermuda needs to think differently about where we are going.
The problems we talk about every day aren’t separate.
A young Bermudian who cannot find somewhere affordable to live may decide to leave. Businesses that cannot find workers struggle to grow. Bringing in additional workers creates more demand for housing. Education affects whether Bermudians are prepared for the opportunities that exist. The cost of living runs through all of it.
Pull one thread and you quickly find the others.
That means we need more than separate announcements from separate ministries. We need to know what kind of Bermuda we are trying to build and make decisions that move us towards it.
I don’t pretend that government is easy. Resources are limited, unexpected problems happen and sometimes there is no perfect choice.
But that makes knowing where we are going even more important.
Bermuda has tremendous strengths. We have talented people, successful businesses, international connections and a community that has repeatedly shown its ability to adapt.
I am confident about what our country can achieve.
But confidence in Bermuda doesn’t require us to pretend that we are heading in the right direction when the evidence tells us otherwise.
Soon someone else will have their hands on the wheel.
For the rest of us, the more important question isn’t who is driving.
It is where we are going.
Because if the destination hasn’t changed, changing the driver won’t get us somewhere different.
- Ben Smith is the Opposition Leader and Shadow Minister for Education & Sport
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