Some time back I reported here about the Bermuda Green Party, which launched a Facebook site back in June 2009 and a more recent blog in September. They hadn’t had much activity pretty much ever since I made that announcement, and with the launch of Bermuda’s Democratic Alliance last week I was worried they had ceased altogether. So it came as a great relief to me that they have been active in the last few days, posting a series of new topics on their blog concerning reducing imports, water conservation and sustainable housing.
Despite the novelty of the BDA’s use of Facebook as a method for developing policy and interaction, in truth it was the Bermuda Green Party that has pioneered this technique in the Bermudian context. And despite the BDA benefiting from some 18 months of gestation (if you include as I do the reform movement within the UBP that later became the BDA), and the fact that the BDA has many members who have been active in UBP politics for years, it is the Bermuda Green Party that has a more substantial policy than the BDA.
The Bermuda Green Party does not have any identifiable names behind it; it’s main agent is anonymous and it has no MPs. It is even questionable whether it intends to be a political party in anything more than name. In these departments the BDA far outshines the Bermuda Green Party at the moment. The BDA also has access to members experienced in politics, both in organising (having several defecting UBP Party Chairmen and Branch Officers involved) and parliamentary procedure, not to mention a surge of support (based on their facebook site), no doubt helped by the media coverage they have received to date. This gives the BDA a huge advantage over the Bermuda Green Party to date.
Where the Bermuda Green Party has an advantage over the BDA is in the realm of policy and ideology, as well as international recognition, with prominent Green Party movements in Germany, France, the UK, Canada and the USA. The policies discussed on the Bermuda Green Party’s facebook site and blog are, by far, more substantial than the flowery rhetoric which is all the BDA has to date. The Bermuda Green Party can easily tap into the experiences (and assistance) of its international sister parties, as well as the well-developed Bermudian environmentalist movement here. If it is able to do so then the Bermuda Green Party could easily transform itself into a formal and well organised political party in time for the next election (well barring any snap elections that is).
In truth the BDA has described itself as a centrist political party, and based on that it can conceivably draw on the experiences and assistance of the Liberal International. In such a way the BDA has a readily recognisable political ideology and platform from which it could draw upon. The difficulty is that both the PLP and UBP have been focused on a politics of the centre since at least 1998, and it will be difficult for the BDA to differentiate itself from their respective positions.
The main challenges for the Bermuda Green Party are those of organisation and race. It must transform itself into an actually organised political party, able to contest elections and push its policies effectively. Beyond that, and as much as one wishes it weren’t so, Bermuda’s politics are still greatly influenced by race. And Bermuda’s environmentalist movement are, rightly or wrongly, perceived as being largely White. The BDA has the potential to alter these political racial dynamics sufficiently to reduce this challenge for the Bermuda Green Party. One further challenge for the Bermuda Green Party is that with the emergence of the BDA there is the risk that they will run out of momentum, with any potential interest being captured by the BDA at the moment. They also risk seeing their policies co-opted by the BDA in the mean time, which from a green point of view is not necessarily bad/
