KREM Radio, Belize’s first private, commercial radio station, will mark 21 years of broadcast next week. It is important for us to visit these landmarks in history, because there are always politicians seeking to revise history in order to embellish their own reputations.
Said Musa really had nothing to do with the emergence of KREM Radio. The PUP politician who took the lead in the early 1989 process was the attorney Glenn Godfrey, who was about to run in a general election for the first time in his life. In a way, KREM Radio was the result of an act of political desperation on the part of the then Opposition People’s United Party (PUP).
The United Democratic Party (UDP) never gives public credit to the political contributions of this newspaper to their cause in 1983 and 1984. A pattern of disrespect for Partridge began emerging soon after the UDP came to power for the first time (1984). We point this out because there was a British army garrison radio station broadcasting from Ladyville for several years before Amandala stepped up its campaign for a radio license in early 1989. British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) was a private radio station controlled by a foreign entity in an independent country. Exactly when the British began to broadcast, and remember, this signal was loud inside Belize’s largest population center – Belize City, we cannot say. One of the incongruities of the situation was that this was the same British who had refused to give Belize a defence guarantee when we moved to political independence in September of 1981.
UDP Minister of Home Affairs (and Broadcasting), Deputy Prime Minister Curl Thompson, wanted Amandala to fill out an application form for a radio license. The questions on the form, it appeared to us, assumed one was already in possession of radio transmission equipment, which was not the case with this newspaper. Having contributed substantially to the UDP general election victory in 1984, at Amandala we felt we were being given a bureaucratic runaround.
In early 1989 we began making noise, and the PUP suddenly jumped on our bandwagon. They publicly promised to give “Radio Amandala” a license if they were elected in the 1989 general elections. And so they were, in September of 1989, and by the most narrow of margins in Belize’s electoral history where seats were concerned, 15-13. So tight was the space, so to speak, that the PUP moved quickly after the election to bring the UDP area representative in Toledo West, Stanley Usher, over to their side. Remember that?
Instead of granting Amandala a radio license, as we had sought and the PUP had promised, Glenn Godfrey instead set up a “bare bones” radio station on Partridge Street in which he took a 20 percent share. He then sold his shares to one of his American clients, and informed the remainder of the KREM Radio shareholders – Evan X Hyde, Rufus X, and Rodolfo Silva, that the PUP government was privatizing Radio Belize, the government station managed at the time by Rene Villanueva, Sr.
From the time of Radio Belize’s privatization until the same Godfrey issued the second private, commercial radio license – to the aforementioned Rene Villanueva in February of 1993, just four months before general elections, KREM Radio fought for its survival against the giant, 40-year-old Radio Belize.
The evidence strongly suggests that PUP leadership did not intend for KREM Radio to succeed. When they saw that KREM was defeating Radio Belize, they gave the green light to LOVE FM. The key thing to understand is that Rene Villanueva, previously an ordinary public officer, almost immediately had possession of a national signal. Today, 21 years after its establishment, KREM Radio still does not have a national signal to compete with LOVE’s. By 1994, Rene had ingratiated himself enough with the new UDP government to the point where the UDP newspaper was praising LOVE’s management and ridiculing KREM’s supposed incompetence.
In early 1994, then UDP Minister of Broadcasting, Dean Barrow, gave Gerald Garbutt Belize’s third private, commercial radio license – to operate FM 2000, which is now POSITIVE VIBES, the Opposition PUP’s radio station. Barrow may claim that he did not know that Garbutt, who had been KREM Radio’s general manager from mid-1990 to early 1993, had just finished managing Ralph Fonseca’s successful general election campaign in Belize Rural Central in June of 1993. When he gave Garbutt a radio licence, Dean Barrow, in effect, was giving Ralph Fonseca a radio licence. Our feeling at the time was that Garbutt must have convinced him, Barrow, that FM 2000 would take on KREM. In 1994 Rene did not yet have MORE FM and ESTEREO AMOR in his arsenal, and there was no guarantee that he, having failed with Radio Belize, would be able to defeat KREM with LOVE.
The bottom line in this 21-year-old broadcasting saga is that KREM survived against serious odds and high level conspiracy. It was a real case of power to the people and power in the struggle. Straight.