In my post-World War II lifetime, the PUP had won every single general election (1954, 1957, 1961, 1965, 1969, 1974 and 1979) until the Opposition UDP made a breakthrough in 1984, under the leadership of Dr. Rt. Hon. Manuel Esquivel.

The UDP, a coalition of three Opposition parties (NIP, PDM, and Liberal) had done very well in the 1974 generals and was generally expected to oust the PUP in 1979. There was a dispute inside the UDP beneath the surface, however, as the 1979 election approached, and the UDP lost by a 13-5 margin in seats.

Dr. Esquivel had only become the UDP leader in January of 1983, when he defeated the former UDP leader, Dean Lindo, and Hon. Philip Goldson, in a leadership convention at Bird’s Isle.

In the early 1970’s, as the president of UBAD, I had been slapped around by the powerful PUP, so I was determined not to subject myself and my family to similar punishment by the newly empowered UDP, led by a man I had supported in the 1983 UDP leadership convention.

When UBAD split at the executive level in early 1973, one of the officers who had opposed me was Rufus X, but within a couple years we had reconciled, and I felt that later he had saved my life in 1984.

The reason Rufus had gone against me in 1973 was that he had a burning grievance aqainst Mr. Price and the PUP. So he had been a strong supporter of the new UDP from its official birth in September of 1973. 

It so happened that Rufus, who felt that it was he who had made it possible for the UDP’s Sam Rhaburn (deceased) to defeat the PUP’s Fred Hunter (deceased) in Belize Rural North in 1984, began to feel that Rhaburn was not up to the job, and decided to challenge him in a candidate convention for the constituency. Remember now, Sam Rhaburn had been employed as an accountant in the accounting firm of the late Net Vasquez, who was probably Dr. Esquivel’s most influential mentor.

So what happened was that the UDP, under Dr. Esquivel’s leadership, ruled that the voters who had been registered by Rufus for the UDP Belize Rural North convention, in 1987 thereabouts, were really not UDP supporters but actually PUP in their thinking.

The reality no doubt was that Rufus was too radical and outspoken for the UDP leadership, which was heavily pro-American in their 1984 to 1989 administration.

So now, Rufus, a foundation UDP, decided to run as an independent candidate in the September 1989 general election. I felt duty-bound to support him.

Thus began a problem between Dr. Esquivel and myself, which became worse when Mr. Goldson split from the UDP in 1991 and formed the National Alliance for Belizean Rights (NABR) in protest against Esquivel’s UDP decision to go along with the then-ruling PUP in supporting the Maritime Areas Act. By the time of the June 1993 general election, the problem between Dr. Manuel and myself had become vendetta-like. Bill Lindo, campaign manager for Joe Coye, the 1993 PUP candidate in Esquivel’s Caribbean Shores constituency, knew about the vendetta, and easily persuaded me to endorse Mr. Coye against Mr. Esquivel. 

The complication in the situation was the fact that the PUP leaders had alienated me with their conspiracies against KREM Radio almost as soon as the station came on the air. In the first instance, it was not a radio station, as such, that I was seeking: I sought a radio station licence, which would have enabled me to solicit investors and set things up properly. Instead, the brilliant minds in the PUP pushed a flimsy radio “station” on me, which they had promised the big financier boys they would easily dismantle after the 1989 election. This is a long story, but the point is that, apart from endorsing Joe Coye in Caribbean Shores, I did not campaign for the PUP in the 1993 general election, an election narrowly and surprisingly won by the UDP, although the PUP pulled 2,000 more popular votes than the UDP did.

I did not campaign for the PUP, but I think the UDP leadership overall thought that I did. The night of the June 30, 1993 election, I was working at KREM Radio, maybe after 11 p.m. or so, when a newly victorious UDP candidate came to the station along with a lady friend. The lady friend had been drinking. It seemed to me that their visit there was to crow over their success. What had happened in the Collet constituency, in which Kremandala is physically situated, was that the one Hubert Elrington, who had won the Lake I seat for the UDP, had played a significant role in ensuring Faith Babb’s one-vote victory over the PUP incumbent, the late Remijio Montejo, in Collet. (I don’t know the details of Hubert’s role.)

The UDP that was victorious in the 1993 election was actually a UDP/NABR coalition. The UDP and NABR had made up just weeks before the PUP called the election. The agreement between the two parties was that if the coalition won, Mr. Esquivel would repeal the Maritime Areas Act. He never did. 

(The JENKINS photograph is of the UDP/NABR coalition which won that stunning victory in the 1993 general election. The late Governor-General, Dame Minita Gordon, is seated to Mr. Esquivel’s right and Mr. Goldson’s left.)