Sunday 4 May, 2008 marks a year since the SNP made political history by winning the Scottish Parliament elections.

Writing for the BBC Scotland news website, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen reflects on the last 12 months.

The things people remember most about the SNP are how they were prepared to say anything to get elected and then broke the promises when they got in.

Mr Stephen said his party was delivering in its new role

Breaking the promise to scrap student debt, the promise of smaller class sizes, the promise to give grants to first-time house buyers.

As their term in office continues, more and more people will object to this chameleon politics. They are storing up problems and ducking the big issues.

Our contributions in the chamber have hit home and have impressed commentators.

Remember, it was the Liberal Democrats who were so effective in exposing the broken promises from the SNP - cutting investment in universities, backtracking on new schools, uncovering fiddled hospital waiting lists, exposing proposed new student tuition fees and, perhaps most shockingly, catching the SNP writing a friendly letter to Robert Mugabe.

Far from confidently governing with a clear agenda, the SNP have lost a series of crucial votes on the floor of the chamber.

Their U-turn on whether to recruit 1,000 extra police officers was defeated and they had to change their budget.

The skills strategy they presented to parliament was thrown out and they were told to come back with something better.

And on transport, the SNP plan to scrap the Edinburgh trams was rejected by all the other parties.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats are meeting the challenge of our new role as the most effective opposition party in Scotland.

Of course, we support the government when it does things we agree with - abolishing the graduate endowment or scrapping council tax.

But our job in opposition is to hold the SNP to account.

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