Looking at Our New Premier: Paula Cox

Effective tonight [Oct 28] Paula Cox is now the preeminent public figure in Bermuda, yet she remains a fairly private individual.

Premier Cox’s political style is a combination of the fastidious, the industrious and the inconspicuous. She has an unparalleled talent for backing out of the limelight, dispensing with the public relations handlers and media consultants who are as often to be found in a politician’s retinue these days as a celebrity’s. There’s no false folksiness about her. But neither is there any of the chilly reserve or polar aloofness her critics contend are Cox hallmarks. She is friendly, accessible and engaging despite an undeserved popular reputation in some quarters for solemnity. “I have to admit I find it hard to sit through her speeches,” one PLP colleague told Bernews. “They’re too long. Life is too short.”

But the late Harry Viera, a former United Bermuda Party and Independent MP, was beguiled by both her intellect and her methodical, almost punctillious approach to her Cabinet responsibilities.

“She doesn’t speak over people’s heads,” he once said of her. “She actually speaks where people’s heads should be. But we’ve all become too lazy to listen to what someone like Paula Cox is saying. We want sound-bites from politicians, not serious addresses. We want them to provide us with instant gratification, not long-term solutions. She tries to engage our intellects as well our emotions and good for her for doing so. That’s actually the difference between a potential statesman and a fly-by-night politician.”

The late Dame Lois Browne Evans put it more succinctly. She once described Paula Cox as “the future.”

Her chief political assets have always been her charm and calm. But there’s an earnest vulnerability beneath the cool and polished facade. As she jokingly told an interviewer, her almost professional unflappability is acquired, not inherent. “It was not always easy being the elder sister to my rambunctious younger brothers, Jeremy and Robert,” she said. “I remembers times when my brothers would annoy me and I would complain to my parents to no avail. They told me that as the eldest, I had to set the example. I had to learn to ignore my brothers when they tried to provoke me.”

Her brother Jeremy Cox, the supervisor of insurance at the Bermuda Monetary Authority, concurs. He drily observed in a recent interview how the new Premier had long-since learned to keep her irritation in check: “She is quite good at managing her frustration with ignorance.”

Married to Cameroon-born businessman Germain Nkeuleu since 1999, Premier Paula Ann Cox is the only daughter of Alinda and C. Eugene Cox, one of the founding fathers of the Progressive Labour Party who went on to serve as both Deputy Premier and Finance Minister.

In her professional life, Premier Cox worked as Corporate Counsel at ACE Limited, joining the global re/insurance giant in 2002. She previously worked as Vice President and Senior Legal Counsel of Global Funds Services at The Bank of Bermuda Limited.

She became active in Bermudian politics after she completed her education and returned to the island on a full-time basis in the 1990s. For many years Premier Cox was the late PLP Leader Frederick Wade’s closest aides. She was his first Shadow Parliamentary Secretary, and at the same time the PLP’s Public Relations Officer. She is credited with helping Mr. Wade not only rebuild the PLP in the wake of a catastrophic mid-1980s split that led to the creation of the short-lived National Democratic Party (and saw the PLP reduced to a rump of just seven MPs following the 1985 General Election) but also revitalising the party.

Aged 32, Premier Cox was first elected to Parliament in Devonshire North for the then-Opposition PLP in a by-election in October 1996, following the sudden death of Mr. Wade.

Two years later, on November 9, 1998, she was one of the 26 PLP candidates who swept to power in the historic 1998 elections, taking control of Bermuda’s then 40-seat House of Assembly. Premier Cox was appointed as the first PLP Minister of Labour, Home Affairs and Public Safety.

She was then appointed Minister of Education and Development on November 1, 2001. Following the July 2003 General Election, Ms Cox was appointed as Attorney-General and Minister of Education. She served in this dual portfolio until January 2004.

She and her father were unique in the House of Assembly as they were the only serving father-daughter duo in the Bermuda Parliament’s almost 400-year history. She was named in “The Bermudian Magazines’” Best of Bermuda Gold annual listing as the most effective politician for 2001, 2003 and 2006.

In January 2004, following the death of her father Eugene Cox, she succeeded him as the Minister of Finance — a post he had wanted her to take. In October 2006, Premier Cox rose to the position of Deputy Premier.

In the hot-and-cold hostilities between different party factions, she is seen as a conciliator and a bridge-builder. She remained loyal to former Premier Dame Jennifer Smith during the aborted palace coup by PLP backbenchers following the 2003 election. Along with her father, she helped to block the seemingly irresistible rise of Dr. Ewart Brown to the position of Premier by campaigning for Alex Scott as a compromise candidate after Dame Jennifer stepped down to facilitate party unity. When Dr. Brown later defeated Mr. Scott for the party leadership at the 2006 PLP delegates conference, Ms Cox was disappointed but agreed to serve under Dr. Brown both as Deputy Premier and Finance Minister, enhancing her reputation as a team player and peacemaker.

When Dr. Brown said he would be leaving office in the fall, Premier Cox announced she would be seeking the leadership position on August 5. She became the immediate front runner in the three-man race, drawing broad support from within the party.

She deliberately chose to wage a low-key campaign for the leadership, courting the party delegates and not publicly engaging rivals Dale Butler and Terry Lister in a bid to keep perceptions of PLP factionalism and divisiveness at bay.

Her platform for the leadership of both the party and the country was characteristically concise — and ambitious. She promised a renewed emphasis on upgrading public education, vigorous job creation programmes, an extended and reinforced social safety net for those in need — and a zero-tolerance policy towards the current epidemic of violent crime. But the new Premier also reached beyond the PLP’s traditional support base during her campaign, appealing to the local and international corporate sectors. Her platform included a raft of business-friendly pledges intended to help spur investment and economic growth in Bermuda.

High profile supporters of her candidacy included Minister Walter Roban, Minister Neletha Butterfield, Minister Michael Scott, Minister Elvin James, Minister Derrick Burgess, Minister Glenn Blakeney, MP Wayne Furbert, Senator Marc Bean, Attorney General Senator Kim Wilson and former Premiers Alex Scott and Dame Jennifer Smith.

“Certainly she had to win the votes of the PLP delegates,” said one confidante. “That was her primary consideration and that’s why she took a softly-softly approach rather than risk any public feuding with the other two contenders. But as the presumptive heir to Ewart Brown, a highly polarising figure, she also had to win the hearts and minds of Bermudians during this campaign. And their confidence. I don’t think she’s done that yet. Although now the delegates conference is behind her, I think you can expect to see her embark on a full-blown public charm offensive within the coming days.”

In recent months the new Premier’s public popularity has fluctuated along with Bermuda’s leading economic indicators. The global recession has changed the mood of Bermuda as well as Bermudians’ mood about the former Finance Minister.

Her once gravity-defying public opinion numbers have come crashing back down to earth. With an unemployment rate unofficially estimated to stand at 10 percent, a contracting economy and skyrocketing levels of public and private debt, the unstoppable force of the Finance Minister’s single-minded policy of attempting to borrow Bermuda out of the global recession has finally collided with the immoveable object Bermudian incredulity. A lack of belt-tightening on Government’s part, a seeming disregard for fiscal responsibility in some areas of Government and a series of public sector scandals involving cost overruns, has led to closer scrutiny of her guiding principles and management style.

“Frankly, the Bermudian economy runs under its own momentum when times are good,” says a former senior Bermuda politician speaking to Bernews on condition of anonymity. “The Finance Minister goes to the House of Assembly and takes bows and credit for something that is really outside his or her realm of responsibility. We in Bermuda are very much the beneficiaries of global economic trends. An economic infrastructure was set in place here decades ago, one we certainly maintain, finesse and upgrade, that allows us to reap substantive rewards in terms of both the off-shore and hospitality business we attract with very little effort on our part. That’s when times are good. It’s when times are bad you need someone at Finance who has a comprehensive grasp of economic realities. And ice-water running through in his or her veins. Someone who knows when to apply the brakes to Government spending, when to make difficult but unavoidable cuts in public spending. Someone who will argue with his or her Cabinet colleagues and stand firm when economic realities dictate firmness is not just necessary but mandatory. When she described herself earlier this year as ‘just a cog in the wheel’ in terms of Cabinet decision-making, that sound you could hear was jaws hitting the pavement throughout the island. Not only was she engaging in a singular act of self-abasement, presumably for the sake of Cabinet and party loyalty, she was also repudiating her constitutional role and responsibilities. As Finance Minister she is obliged to act as a check and balance to Government profligacy and waste, not to serve as a cog in either governmental or party political machinery. People were stunned. And disappointed.

“As Premier, she will ignore that disappointment at her peril. If she thinks voters shouldn’t be angry, then she has to make her case to them early and sincerely. But now she has emerged from Dr. Brown’s shadow, now she is leader in her own right rather than following another leader she wasn’t always necessarily sympatico with, I think she will attempt to do just that.”

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