The ACB is a group of young businessmen and professionals who participated in the giant August 28 demonstration last year, and have since held public forums featuring prominent speakers addressing topical issues. The ACB has been careful to maintain its independence of the Opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), but the group is considered anti-government.

We are writing this editorial to discuss the ACB?s invitation to Kremandala to participate in Saturday?s demonstration. We declined the invitation, but offered the ACB the use of all our media facilities to reach and recruit the people of Belize.

The Association of Concerned Belizeans is a good thing for Belize?s democracy. The people who decide municipal and general elections are not party fanatics. Such fanatics are pretty evenly distributed between the blue PUP and the red UDP. The people who are the deciding factors in elections are those ordinarily neutral citizens who are swayed to one side or the other during the course of the election campaign, or on election day itself. A strong, intelligent and mature group like the ACB, if it holds together, will be a factor in 2006 and 2008.

Politics in Belize has changed since the time of the UBAD group which gave birth to Amandala newspaper, (1969), and indirectly to KREM Radio (1989). The PUP is not as aggressive or as violent as it was in the late 1960?s and early/mid 1970?s. Perhaps it is that they have not been properly provoked lately. Whatever the case, when UBAD began to march against the ruling PUP, it was because the PUP arrested the UBAD leaders in February of 1970 and charged them with seditious conspiracy. ?Sedition? is the most serious political offence a citizen can be guilty of, except for ?treason.? ?Sedition? means that one is trying to overthrow the government in some way or the other. All UBAD did to provoke the ?sedition? charge was publish a newspaper. But, of course, UBAD held public meetings, and these public meetings no doubt disturbed the PUP government. The PUP had a reputation at the time of kicking the NIP?s butt at close quarters, and UBAD was resolved that we would not suffer such a fate.

It was not the ACB which organized the August 28 demonstration last year. That demonstration was held under the aegis of the Opposition UDP. It is important that the ACB understand that when you leave from the lecture hall and enter the streets, then it is advisable that you go to the streets in a strong way. When you announce a demonstration, you have no guarantee that you will have a large crowd. If you have a large crowd, then that is strength in itself. But if your crowd is not large, your core must be tight.

Between 1970 and 1972, the publisher of this newspaper was tried in the Supreme Court on two separate occasions and several times in Magistrate?s Court. There were other UBAD leaders, like Norman Fairweather and Rufus X, who were more militant street heroes. The point is that the UBAD movement was not a non-violent movement. We made, and make, no apologies for this, because we understood the PUP to be a violent organization.

If you see the face of the PUP as kindly, old George Price, then we see the face of his ?PUP soldier of the revolution? ? the one who fired bullets into an unarmed crowd. If Kremandala has to march against the PUP, then it will not be under the philosophical banner of Mahatma Gandhi. The reason Nelson Mandela served 27 years in jail, is because he never denounced the use of violence to remove apartheid. Mandela understood apartheid to be a violent, murderous and genocidal system, and he felt justified in fighting it by any means necessary.

With that said, Kremandala gives full support to the ACB, and we feel proud that we have Belizeans like these, who have the courage of their convictions.

All power to the people.