SATURDAY, JUNE 20: The members of Bermuda's House of Assembly, by majority vote, have decided to keep Dr. Brown in post as Premier. This means that, acting for all Bermuda and all Bermudians, they have decided to keep someone who knowingly breached the Constitution and who acts separately from the Cabinet. More particularly, the PLP members of the House, by their collective action, chose to keep Dr. Brown as their leader. In both instances a clear choice and a definite result.

The PLP has, in this instance, determined that the rule of law is secondary to the retention of political power; and that ignoring Cabinet is acceptable. Their decision represents political growth - in the wrong direction. As in all things, there will be consequences.

One clear consequence, which will certainly unfold over time, is that the community that supports a diminution of the importance of law, will begin to suffer - and suffer more directly - at the hands of people who agree with, and who adopt, their ignoring stance. Skating around the law, bending the law, and breaching the law are now - and for many tomorrows - far more acceptable than yesterday.

Now I - and all Bermuda - can expect to see lowered standards of performance in all areas. When the results of lowered performance begin to show, we will see another consequence as world attention comes back to us. This time, though, it'll come back to watch - and perhaps even gloat - over a once successful community declining into a community in chaos. A service providing community that no longer provides the kind of honest service on which we built our international reputation, and from which we invite others to do their business.

The decline will happen. It will be noticeable. It will affect everybody.

For now, however, Dr. Brown's long and colourful political career continues.

Dr. Brown first came to prominence in the summer of 1968. That was the year when France was wracked by student riots in May. A month earlier Bermuda had blown up with the Floral Pageant riots of April 1968. In July California saw draft-card burning riots and disturbances by American students and draft-age citizens. In August, the people of Czechoslovakia reared up against the Russians. All through 1968, in all five continents, there were significant riots and street actions against the established order of that day.

In 1968, Dr. Brown was leading student demos at Howard University in Washington DC.

Thirty-eight years later, in 2006, in a democratic process created by the sentences and clauses of the Bermuda Constitutional Order, 1968; Dr. Brown became the Premier of Bermuda. In January 2009, in another democratic change operating under the constitution of the United States of America, Barack Obama became the President of the United States of America.

The United States of America, population 300,000,000, and Bermuda population 65,000, have two things in common. Both contain significant minority and majority populations. America is a majority white nation, and American blacks are a thirteen percent minority. Bermuda is a majority black nation with Bermuda whites the thirty-five percent minority.

Barack Obama seems to understand America and his role in America. With a history of hundreds of years of black persecutions, black enslavement, lynchings of blacks, and outright discrimination of blacks - by white Americans; President Barack Obama seems to understand that he is still the President of all Americans. That he represents every American, black as well as white.

Even though America still has its share of virulent - as the Holocaust Museum shooting has just shown - gun-toting 'good 'ol boys', Barack Obama strides above all that and leads by clear example. The quality of Barack Obama's family and personal life set an excellent example for all common people. In all things, Obama sets a good example.

Dr. Brown's political language and political actions and his style of leadership is not like Obama's. Dr. Brown's well-known and well-publicized refusal to answer "Plantation Questions" is, perhaps, the quintessence of a narrowly politicized man. The other Brown - Gordon - would love to treat 99 per cent of David Cameron's questions as 'plantation questions'. But Gordon Brown does not. Instead, in the full play of democracy, Prime Minister Gordon Brown - the other Brown - rises to the Despatch Box, takes the hit, and answers the question.

That's Democracy at work. Visible. Loud. Raucous. Confrontational, indeed. But it works.

Dr. Ewart Brown's refusal to accept or to answer what he chooses to describe as plantation questions was but one of many steps on his road to this recent defiance and abrogation of the very Constitution under whose protection he was elected, and from whose sentences and clauses he draws the power attached to the Office of Premier.

Currently, Dr. Brown is involved in behaviour in which he has clearly - even in the professional eyes of Bermuda's Attorney General - breached Bermuda's Constitution and who has publicly treated his Cabinet with disdain.