by Colin Hyde
This news that the UDP has dumped Willoughby (“W”) as standard bearer for Port Loyola, with nary a supportive vote because hihn marid to the daughter of the Port Loyola rep, who is PUP, there’re so many threads here I don’t know which to pick up first to start weaving my story together. Hmm, the sagest advice ever passed down was, when in doubt spin a coin, pull the answer from a hat, or draw straws. I say, it’s some kind of web here.
It seemed all was good as long as the pareja co-habited, lived in sin. Has a marriage like this, so high up across party lines, ever taken place, anywhere? I doubt it.
Grabbing the first thread that comes to reach, we remember when the senior Barrow wanted Pehreh (“P”) to run in Port Loyola, and be endorsed, and that best laid plan was foiled when Faber and Saldivar, two juvenile aspirants for the UDP crown, created a temporary alliance, entered W in the race, and P’s star came crashing down.
Just for the record, those 3 upstarts didn’t have the oomph to get that job done. You need look no further than P himself if you want a full explanation for his defeat. The story is that he talked up a glamorous storm, as he always does, but put in no tedious leg work. A noh di ker dis story no different from the way dehn bring am.
The loss bothered the senior Barrow. And there would have been no all’s well that ends well here had P won—that because of the effrontery of his underlings. The smarting senior Barrow, who is notorious for his savage “who is not with me is against me” philosophy, pushed aside consideration for the cost to his party’s popularity and urgently set about mastering a plot to deal with Faber and Saldivar.
I said mastering a plot; well, it was a masterful blow, two of the birds taken down in a single convention. Saldivar was supported over Faber, all the while the senior Barrow knowing full well that a certain powerful friend of Belize would not tolerate John, for reasons too, ehm, numerous to mention. After John was disgraced and dumped, Faber, we could say by default, got the reins, but his star was sullied, badly tarnished when he was dusted off by John, whose term as leader was numbered in days because of reported transgressions. Faber went on to lead the UDP to a massive defeat at the polls.
In the general election, W, who had usurped P’s spot, would get blown out by the father of the girl he would marry. Don’t think that people who harbor vendettas would consider W’s crushing loss at the polls to be sufficient punishment for his crime. In that cold world, a wrong isn’t avenged until the victimized party doles out the medicine, personally.
Okay, returning to P, ah, everyone knows he’s not in the UDP for the money, so his fealty – Said Musa would call this kind of devotion obsequious – to the junior Barrow has people wondering. I think a good rundown of P’s history is necessary here, for a better understanding. It’s critical to know he’s from the Dean Lindo camp, and there might be some consanguinity, some similar blood running in the veins.
The first time we meet P in the political arena he is neck and neck with Francis Fonseca in Freetown in 2008, and the UDP is riding a high tide; a blowout victory over the PUP in the election is certain. Freetown had been a PUP stronghold, until 1984 when the patriarch of the Singh family ruled in court that deceased and bogusly registered PUPs on the voters list were ineligible to vote for George Cadle Price. Twenty plus years later, 2008, the area was no gimme for the red, but they had the edge, because we were in a UDP tide.
P’s balloon blew up when a former female client of his, who must have had deep blue affiliations, brought a charge against him, a wild allegation about services paid for but not properly received. P responded that the lady was arguing over chump change. PUPs are arrogant after they win. UDPs are arrogant before and after. In the election, Fonseca nipped P, 1369 to 1353; Prophet Babb got 19 votes, and 20 votes were declared spoiled. You see how fragile the world is. If our brother had humbled himself just until the ballots were cast, we would probably be living in a different Belize now. No, I didn’t say we would be better.
P’s loyalty to Dean Lindo extends to the Lindo-Barrow family lock, stock and barrel. That at least partly explains his support of Shyne, who is New York first, Israel second, then Belize, because home is where they have to take you in. Getting on, P next emerges as a political hopeful in Mesopotamia, as successor to the retiring Finnegan after the anointed Zenaida was ditched because she tongue-lashed the senior Barrow. My, my, Belizean women really make it a hobby to chew out the male brothers.
Mesop was no Freetown. That division was red to the core. Latchman (1993), Lightburn (1998), Brackett (2003), Waight (2008), Palacio (2012), and Dorla Vaughan (2015), all got wiped out by Finnegan. So, P could count his chickens, and in two months’ time with the right feed they would be ready to feature in a big cookout. And then, jos laik dat, he quietly walked away from the sure seat, so the party could set up Shyne, and went to Port.
Port, the locus of the betrayal these red devils waited years to avenge, as per party success it’s possible the UDP thought that division, which had been controlled by the retiring Boots Martinez since 2003, was bold red with P at the lead, despite the persistent Gilroy closing the gap significantly on the incumbent in the 2015 election. It has been said that the senior Barrow’s sister did all the grueling work for him in Queen’s Square. Did no one ask her, so she could tell them that Boots’ voters were scattered all over the land, thus Port 2020 was iffy? Did P, who isn’t shy of swagger, volunteer thinking he was a sure bet to pull it off for the party?
He expected to be endorsed. He wasn’t. In the convention he had the backing of Boots, and of course the backing of the senior Barrow and his crowd. But that wasn’t enough to neutralize his not walking, and the defiant 3 – Faber, Saldivar, and their candidate, W.
They say that pettiness and bad-mindedness are common to all political operatives. P is the chairman of the UDP. The son of the senior Barrow is presently the UDP leader. As long as W continued living in sin, he was safe from the venom of their revenge. Snake-waiting-boy, they were there to pounce when W slipped and took his girl down the aisle. W got his bride, and paid for crossing their plans in 2020. After chasing him like a dog from the red, they might have to take him back if he returns to a life of sin. For now, he is a stray, unless he is welcomed under the umbrella of his father-in-law’s party.
Uh-uh, new news, I saw a Channel 7 interview—Vasquez and the junior Barrow—in which he, the junior B, said he had no inkling who W was marrying when he favored him with a wedding ring. Number one on my list of dislikes in this world is people believing false things about me, and I respect the law of reciprocation; but this is the political arena, so I’m no hypocrite to think that Junior B salivated when he heard that ring request. Poor W, a bet is that he was on a roundabout ask, fishing to see how his party that he would give his life for would react to his love union. And Junior B, as savage as the senior B, gave W the rope to hang himself.
There’s not been a peep from P, the one who must be getting the biggest kick out of sticking a fork in the steak that’s best eaten cold. For the junior B, this is just for daddy. But for P, it’s imminently personal. Vasquez amused when he asked the junior Barrow if Boots was now tagged for Port. Of course it’s P, but giving Vasquez a pass for his surprising innocence, maybe there are strict orders that P is not to be disturbed until he has finished savoring his morsel.
Why Ronaldo is white
I landed in a foreign social media feed where “whites” were gathering around Cristiano Ronaldo because some black people were pointing out the brother’s family connection with Cape Verde, an island off the north coast of Africa, and Algeria in mainland North Africa. That Algeria is also connected to Zidane and Mbappe. And right next door, in Egypt, there is the sensational Salah.
If you don’t know football, Cristiano Ronaldo is the hardest working forward of his generation, and arguably the best player of his generation. In the forum there were discussions about the ignorance of calling people white when discussing Europeans, explanations about the difference between the Nordic British and Scandinavians, and the Iberian Spanish and Portuguese.
Aha, the primary purpose of this piece is to report on one named Muratina Wine who said, “… we shall call him white coz he is successful. Had he been a thief we would have labeled him fully black.”