Fans of Kremandala will remember that after last year’s Christmas break, the Kremandala Show did not return to the airwaves for months. In fact, I actually taped a radio message to say that we had decided to scrap the show, after fourteen years, because it had completed its mission.
A year ago then, I was thinking that I had to go back to my roots. Ten years of relative business success had confined me in such a way that I was separated from my own people. I couldn’t go here and I couldn’t go there, because, not only were there new generations on the block, so to speak, but now that I had become a “success,” I was being viewed like a cash register.
The Kremandala Show is a forum where educated people with different political and philosophical opinions meet to discuss and, yes, argue about various matters. As chairman, my job is to keep things real, in the sense of making sure that the conversation does not become so lofty that roots people can’t make sense of what the panelists are saying.
The main criticism of the show has always been that sometimes the overall audience can’t make out what the panelists are saying, when we become heated and begin talking at the same time. There is nothing I can do about that, because this is the way everyday discussions go. Sometimes people talk at the same time. And I want that everyday flavor. I want people who participate in the show to feel relaxed and feel free to be themselves.
When I decided late last year to abandon the Kremandala Show, it was partly because I had come to the point where I believed I personally had to come to my people in a more direct and less democratic format. What you have to understand is that I always feel that I have a responsibility to the people of Belize to provide them with whatever information and knowledge that I can. (I suppose this may be viewed as presumption on my part, but there is also a historical process here which began more than forty years ago.)
As time went on, early this year, however, I found myself unable to create any format for such an electronic media model of return to the people. There were different reasons for that inability to create, but the biggest problem may have been that I am not the X man I used to be.
Forty years ago I moved from lecturing in a classroom to addressing small groups in indoor settings. Just a couple months after that, there was a big move to taking the rostrum at public meetings in settings like the Courthouse Wharf, Pound Yard, Cinderella Plaza, and so on and so forth. Then we began to speak at neighbourhood meetings – Harlem Square, Yarborough Bridge, corner of Boulevard and Vernon Street, Lovely Lane, and so on. We traveled the rough roads in old and unreliable vehicles back then, and addressed the people in Punta Gorda, Stann Creek Town, Pomona Valley, San Ignacio/Santa Elena, Orange Walk Town, Corozal Town. We even held public meetings in Hattieville when that village was hard core PUP and considered “bad man town.”
No, for sure I ain’t that X I used to be. And earlier this year I was able to recognize that, before embarking on a journey to God knows where. The Kremandala Show had been a revenue earner for the Kremandala radio and television stations, so that the managers of these stations both welcomed the news that the show would return. This must have been around April of this year.
I am recalling these developments with regard to the Kremandala Show because this week it suddenly occurred to me that I should invite a taxi driver friend of mine to be a guest panelist some time on the show. I can’t say if we have ever had a panelist who does not have formal education at least to the secondary level. I can, however, tell you this for a fact: there are very, very intelligent Belizeans who do not have formal secondary education. For real.
In closing, and tangentially, from time to time I have been having problems producing this column. I’ve become uncomfortable with the hype. I’d like to operate on a more low key level. I am coming to you with this, because when you don’t see the column it is not because I am losing my respect for you faithful readers. What it is, is that I am searching for different ways of reaching you. In the case of the column which should have appeared mid-week for example, I was halfway through when I decided, no, this isn’t gong to work. Bear with me. I have love for you, still.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.