The sculptor, Stephen Okeke, originally from Nigeria, is a brilliant artist and intellectual, but in the matter of the Philip Goldson bust, he ran into a maze of hidden political history which left him as lost and confused as some of the UDP members and supporters are themselves with respect to their party’s history..
Okeke had heard and read enough about Goldson to know that Mr. Goldson was a genuine Belizean national hero, much loved by many, many Belizeans, and so he thought he could repeat the success he had achieved with a previous bust that of national hero, former Prime Minister and PUP Leader Emeritus, Rt. Hon. George Price.
It is possible that Okeke had been commissioned in some way by some PUP person or persons to sculpt the bust of Mr. Price, but that is not my impression. I think he began the project, then sought the support of the PUP leaders and loyalists, and that support came pouring forth.
For sure no one commissioned Okeke to sculpt a bust to the memory of Mr. Goldson. When he sought support from the UDP establishment, Okeke did not receive the blessing or financial support of the UDP leadership and loyalists. For some time, Okeke’s cause had been championed by Rufus X, who campaigned for financial support for the Goldson bust for years, I would say.
The UDP is a party which can sometimes behave in such a puerile manner, it would be pathetic were it not so dangerous. Rufus X, who had become very close to Stephen Okeke, felt that I personally was not making as much noise on behalf of the sculptor’s Goldson project as I should have been making, so Rufus militantly brought up the issue on the Kremandala Show one Tuesday night. Rufus wanted me to commit publicly to the project, and I had no problem doing so.
But I would not have gone out on that limb without being pressured by Rufus, because I felt Okeke had gone about the project the wrong way, and that, once again, Okeke was assuming he knew all there was to know about Belizean politics. As it turned out, the UDP immediately attacked me (and Rufus X) in their newspaper as being supportive of the Goldson bust only because we wanted to embarrass the UDP. There are times when Mr. Barrow’s party really needs to grow up and get the sense.
You know, there are many ruling PUP leaders and followers who believe that prominent people who speak and write at Kremandala daily and weekly are working on behalf of the UDP. On the other hand, it is for sure that the ruling Belize City faction of the UDP will interpret a victory over the PUP next month as a victory over Kremandala and its chairman, Evan X Hyde. This is what the UDP did in 1993, and then proceeded to persecute Partridge Street for five years, two months and twenty-seven days. In fact, the UDP diverted their Central American Boulevard victory parade in the afternoon of Friday, July 2, 1993, so that they could parade on Partridge Street to intimidate I.
A young UDP official I was speaking with on Friday last, asked me a question about myself and Mr. Barrow, so I said to him, there is a history here. So many of the younger UDP people do not know their own party’s history, it’s not funny. In fact, during the pre-Christmas broadcasts on the UDP WAVE radio show, a UDP standard bearer was asking people to answer questions so that they could win gifts. He and the WAVE host and hostess decided that Dr. Ted Aranda was the first UDP Leader, in 1973. (Ted Aranda wasn’t even in Belize in 1973.) It wasn’t until the following day that WAVE Radio corrected their major blunder.
The issue of the founding and first Leader of the UDP are at the core of the hidden history which has victimized myself for 35 years and befuddled Okeke to such an extent he confessed on national radio that he was “stressed out.”
Another thing I’ve heard misinformed people say, is that Mr. Goldson was one of the founders of the UDP. No, a thousand times, no. The United Democratic Party was the vehicle used by powerful people to replace Mr. Goldson as Opposition Leader. They wanted to do it from1969, but Mr. Goldson was so popular they could not seal the deal until late 1974 – more than five years later. That was when it was announced that Dean Lindo was the UDP Leader, after the 1974 general elections and more than a year after the UDP was actually founded. Mr. Philip was replaced as Opposition Leader without being defeated in open convention.
The truth is that the people who helped to found the UDP in September of 1973 were Deputy Leaders of Mr. Goldson’s National Independence Party – Simeon Agapito Hassock and Ulric Rollington Fuller, both deceased. Mr. Goldson was in London studying law at the time. Not only was he beginning to have the problems with his eyes which eventually blinded him, but he was separated from his wife and six children, who had gone to live in New York.
In Belize at the time when the UDP was founded, I was praying for Mr. Goldson to return from London as quickly as possible. He was the only ally I had in the UDP leadership. The division in UBAD earlier that year had traumatized me. Those UBAD leaders who went with the UDP had the upper hand, because they were now allied with a major establishment force. The only man who could have saved me was Mr. Goldson.
When the UDP was founded in September 1973, I was 26 years old. Though I had been UBAD president for more than four years, I was politically immature. Party politics is very serious business. Even then, there were millions and millions of dollars in jobs and contracts involved. I felt that I deserved to be the candidate in the Collet constituency for the new Opposition, because of my years of service in the streets and my performance with the NIP/UBAD coalition in December of 1971.
Instead, the new UDP in early 1974 brought in a spectacular candidate for Collet from out of nowhere. He was Kenneth Tillett, a Crooked Tree product who had been living in the United States. Ken Tillett was university educated and on the rostrum he sounded like a combination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. To top it off, the then unnamed UDP Leader appointed Michael Finnegan, a former UBAD member, to be the sensational new candidate’s campaign manager in Collet. Evan X Hyde was a dead duck.
I suppose Mr. Goldson must have gotten some kind of sense when he finally returned to Belize, around May of 1974. This was a few months after Ken Tillett had become known as the “golden-tongued orator” and had taken the UDP by storm. Mr. Goldson said not a word to me. In retrospect, we can see that Mr. Goldson was under personal pressure. His wife and children remained in New York. For all intents and purposes, he had lost his family.
I ran for Collet as the single UDP Party candidate in the October 1974 general elections. I ran because I knew that UBAD was over, and I felt that I should be the sacrifice in return for the loyalty of my followers. But when Ken Tillett lost narrowly to the PUP’s Harry Courtenay in Collet, the UDP blamed me. Finnegan told his people that the 89 votes I received had caused the beloved Tillett to lose. Looking back, I suppose I should not have run. The hassle wasn’t worth it.
The story goes on after 1974, and it gets better, in the sense of more interesting. The point of this essay is that I could have told Stephen Okeke, before the fact, that he would get into problems, but he would not have listened to me.
Indeed the ruling PUP used Okeke to embarrass the UDP earlier this month. Mr. Barrow handled this badly from years ago. The UDP should have made a donation to Okeke from the beginning of the project about four years ago, and they should have given their party blessing to the project.
A couple days after Mark Espat had been removed from Cabinet by Prime Minister Musa in December 2004, immediately followed by Cordel Hyde’s resignation from Cabinet, Mr. Barrow and I sat down to talk. Early in the conversation, I suggested to him that we look at the early UDP history. He did not wish to do so. But until the UDP look at their early history honestly and publicly, then they will continue to be defensive on certain matters.
These matters are not of surpassing importance in the present general election campaign, and I would be a fool to compare my political reads and acumen with Mr. Barrow’s. But as long as I am alive, the 1973 political history of the UDP cannot be rewritten to please whomsoever. And if you can’t understand what happened in 1973, you will never understand what happened in 1979. It wasn’t chemicals, Jack. It was the ghost of UBAD past.
Power to the people.