May 17, 2010
Dear Editor,
I am a PUP supporter and campaigner, so it is disheartening to hear that our losses continue to mount. I thought that the news could not get any worse for the PUP. However, the results of the current village council elections show that the PUP continues to fade.
This weekend, the PUP did not even put up a slate in Hattieville, a village that has always voted blue. The PUP also lost several villages it had won before in the North and in Toledo. The UDP swept Cayo, it seems.
It seems to me that the main problem for the PUP is that it has not been able to shake off the many scandals that took place while the party was in government. No one from the PUP has apologized and no one has been sanctioned, even within the party. It is as though nothing happened.
I even heard recently that the former leader Said Musa would want to take back his old position. I recall that when the UDP lost badly in 1998, Dean Barrow did not have to deal with the ghosts of Manuel Esquivel, who had led the UDP to their defeat.
Esquivel resigned and took the blame, as the captain of a sunken ship must do. Maybe if Musa would apologize, accept the many shameful scandals that he allowed to take place, then resign and get off the stage, things would turn around for the PUP.
The sooner this can happen, the better for the party. The country needs a new PUP as an alternative to what is going on.
Sincerely,
Tonya Smith