February 9 will mark 42 years since the founding of UBAD, the organization which laid the foundation for Amandala, the newspaper which became Belize’s leading publication in 1981. We have said that UBAD laid the foundation for Amandala, because the fledgling newspaper could not have survived without the street strength of UBAD.
On Sunday, a growing contrast between the ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) and the Opposition People’s United Party (PUP) was evident in constituency conventions held in Corozal Southeast and Belize Rural North by the UDP and the PUP, respectively. In Corozal Southeast, a newcomer seized control of the constituency from the UDP’s 2008 general election candidate (who had lost by just 15 votes). In Belize Rural North, the PUP held an endorsement convention for an untested attorney, after weeks of wrangling ended with the party refusing for him to be challenged.
After all the years, it should be possible to consider some serious and sinister aspects of what happened to destroy a promising private sector and community initiative in sports industry – semi-pro basketball. The evidence is very powerful that the public sector, which is to say, successive PUP and UDP governments, did not do their part in the nurturing of the industry.
When the Belize Crosscountry first began, on Holy Saturday of 1928, it should be noted that it began as an expedition, and not as a race. That is one of the reasons why you will see some names we would associate with some colonial privilege amongst those who rode to Cayo and back in that first bicycle experiment. As the years went by, however, the journey became a real race, and that race began to be dominated by working class Belizeans.
It is possible for us to rise out of the fear, but we would first have to rid ourselves of greed, materialism, envy, and hedonism. We Belizeans would have to find a way to control those appetites which have become masters of our behavior. Unfortunately, one of those appetites is actual physical hunger, which is not a function of excess, but rather necessity. When hunger is satisfied and begins to turn to greed, that precise moment is difficult to pinpoint.
When this newspaper first constructed the Southside model some time after the sensational assassinations of Crips and Bloods leaders in 1992, there were a couple thinkers who quickly and publicly took issue with that model. No model is perfect: what a model is, is an analytical and learning tool. We were not angry with those critics; we welcomed their challenge and were sure they would someday see as we saw.
Every day on the PUP radio station their spokesmen bemoan all the abuse, victimization and selfishness coming out of the ruling UDP. It may be that these PUP spokesmen are too young to know that the UDP learned from the best: they learned from the PUP. There was no organization which took as much “chance” on non-members and non-supporters as the PUP did in the 1960s and 1970s. This is not to excuse the UDP, for two wrongs do not make a right.
Almost 55 years ago there was a historic power struggle inside the leadership of the People’s United Party (PUP), which was truly nationalistic, anti-colonial and populist at the time. As a result of that power struggle in 1956, Hon. George C. Price became the PUP Leader for the first time, and the previous Leader, Leigh Richardson (deceased), and Philip Goldson (deceased) were purged from the PUP.
In order to understand better what is going on in Belize with reference to security concerns, you must appreciate that there are no Siegfried or Maginot Lines around Belize. The territory is wide open to penetration, from the west and the south especially.
In the 1940s, Robert Sydney Turton, Belize’s second native millionaire (after Isaiah Morter), was in a bitter business fight with the Belize Estate and Produce Company (BEC), a colonial British powerhouse, over hegemony in mahogany and chicle production and export, and also import commission activities. George Cadle Price was Mr. Turton’s personal secretary, and Robert Sydney pushed Mr. Price into politics and sponsored him.
We cannot recall any such development inside a ruling political party since 1964. We refer, in the first instance, to Sunday’s mauling of UDP Orange Walk East area representative, Marcel Cardona, by the party favorite, Landy Burns, and by a “third” candidate, Denny Grijalva. In most cases, a third candidate in a constituency convention favors the incumbent, but Cardona had been condemned to execution, and the sentence was carried out on Sunday, December 12. 2010.
“The war stopped as suddenly and as universally as it had begun. The world lifted its head, surveyed the scene of ruin, and victors and vanquished alike drew breath. In a hundred laboratories, in a thousand arsenals, factories, and bureau, men pulled themselves up with a jerk, and turned from the task in which they had been absorbed. Their projects were put aside unfinished, unexecuted; but their knowledge was preserved; their data, calculations and discoveries were hastily bundled together and docketed for future reference by the War Offices in every country. The campaign of 1919 was never fought; but its ideas go marching along. In every army they are being explored, elaborated, refined under the surface of peace, and should war come again to the world it is not with the weapons and agencies prepared for 1919 that it will be fought, but with developments and extensions of these which will be incomparably more formidable and fatal.
Spokesmen and propagandists for the Opposition People’s United Party would like for this newspaper to begin attacking the ruling United Democratic Party, but that would be a silly thing for us to do. If the Briceño/Musa PUP can so casually create a special national executive post for Luke Espat, tell us, what wouldn’t they do for Ralph Montevideo?
After thirty years as one of the PUP’s most high profile and aggressive cronies, Luke Espat decided three months ago that he no longer wanted to be a common-law wife: he wanted to get the ring. Lucas announced in the press that he was offering himself as a candidate for national campaign manager of the PUP, a national executive post held by the attorney Eamon Courtenay, the older brother of the late David Courtenay, another prominent PUP crony in his time.
