by Colin Hyde

I’ve said I’m blue this year, and I explained from 2021 that if this crowd fought hard to turn things around, it would be hard for me to deny them my X. Still, I would love to give Dr. June Young in Cayo South my vote. June taught at Camalote St. Jude R.C. – congrats to St. Jude, National Primary Schools’ football champions, and winner of the Bishop Martin Cup! I just might, vote red, if I were certain the PUP’s Julius E will win.

I have a plan. I’ll head to the polls in Roaring Creek late into the evening, and I’ll wear my fire engine red shirt, which is a gift from long ago from UB, under a blue one. When I get to the battleground, I will ask around about the direction the wind is blowing. If it is all blue, I’ll take off my blue shirt.  But I won’t do it in a provocative way. I’m not looking to invite any animosity from the PUP. If I do, I will be on the outside for their campaign shirt. When it comes to campaign shirts, welcome to every party.

Since I got the franchise, I’ve voted, except for 2003, which I skipped bikaaz I mi bex wid both of them. The educator Ms. Sandra Coye says she has boycotted the vote for years because it isn’t secure. Ms. Sandra declares her name before she hib word at our political leaders, but when it comes to the X on her ballot, she insists on her private space. 

Sandra’s got many points, but on the crusade against the numbered ballot, I AM NOT WITH HER. There are people who can tell us if we’ve always had numbered ballots, but if it is as recent as two score and ten years, I bet it started when people lost faith in the process because of all the whining, mainly by the red party, which used to lose all the elections. The likely year for numbering, if it hasn’t been used forever, would be the year when the UDP said the X disappeared from the PUP-EBC ballot if it had been placed beside the red square.

There’s contention around the electoral process in every democracy. Tingz ku hapn. A critical presidential election in the US had to be settled in their Supreme Court when ballots were challenged in Florida. That presidential election was decided by less than a thousand votes! You know, you have to wonder why a country like that didn’t do over the vote in Florida.    

Returning to our process at home, the great advantages of the numbered ballot are that immediately after the polls close it is known how many votes were cast, and when the counting is completed there can be no mistake with the important reconciliation. It would take a Houdini to make votes go missing in such a system. 

One “disadvantage” is that the secrecy of the ballots can be violated more easily than when the unnumbered ones are used. Let me tell you this: if those politicians wanted you bad enough, they could get you, no matter the system. You think not? A first step for them might be to hire a card shark, give them a big job in the public service. But yes, skullduggery is a lot harder to pull off with the unnumbered ballot.

Rapscallion public servants would have to be in on the clandestine along the chain. If they want you, the presiding officer, a senior public servant, could commit to memory the number on the ballot they gave you. Another way to track your number at the front end would be through an evil party scrutineer, who keeps track of the numbers UNTIL the devil they are after steps in and dips their finger in the ink. A colluding counting officer would be told to be on the lookout for that vote, though that wouldn’t be easy during the rapid counting process. The more likely method at the back end would be for the evil public servant to, for pay or for malice, access the ballot boxes after the dust settles, and go through those ballots one by one.   

That 1993 UDP upset victory, and not-so-good things that followed

The UDP likes to talk about 1993, a fantastic surprise victory. The red party was divided leading up to that election, and things fell into place like from out of nowhere, and, ehm, out of the blue the party was the new government. But that party hadn’t prepared itself to lead. It promised free land and free education and couldn’t deliver. It didn’t deliver on a pay increase for public employees. It promised it would rescind the Maritime Areas Act, and didn’t and couldn’t. That 1993-1998 UDP government decided to do a redistricting at the 11th hour, and became the first and only government that stayed in power beyond its mandate, a couple days shy of 2 months.

Brother Bill Lindo is about the only non-UDP person who has said something good about that 1993-98 Esquivel government. Mr. Lindo said Esquivel got big points for teaching us to live within our means. Mr. Lindo is formally trained in the economics field. Ah, he doesn’t always have good things to say about people who have formal training in economics.

I said the 1993 UDP had no plan to forward the country. They gave us a circus; all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men set out to send VH Courtenay to jail. The UDP threw all our resources into the investigation. And they didn’t trust any local party with the mission. They sent abroad for a special prosecutor, I think a guy named Bader.

If I remember the accusation, it was that VH as Chairman of SSB didn’t have the right to a lawyer fee in a business transaction involving the Board. All we got out of that case, which the UDP lost, was knowledge of the size of the bite the lawyers take when they are about our business. Whoa, a big appointee in that 1993-1998 government left his big job to defend some foreigners who were accused of drug trafficking. But we already knew which legal business paid better!

I don’t think that VH matter should have reached the court. You can see the conflict of interest, but you can also see that no government will get top personnel to serve if they are denied when bites come around. The UDP would have done better in the case if it was Dean Lindo at the helm, instead of the “boy scout” Esquivel. But Esquivel had long boxed Dean L out of the party.

Talking Dean L, Mr. Dean Barrow joked some decades back that when he became boss of the UDP, di PUP meet dehn match. He said that with Dean L at the helm, if any election fraud was about, there would have been a new man at the bottom of the larceny, and his shirt would have been red, not blue. Hey, if I wanted to know the innards of that failed prosecution, I would ask Kathy. I won’t ask any lawyer a thing. With that crowd, it’s all about what’s in it for them. That breed would sell dehn granny if the price was right.

In a recent interview on Channel 5, Brother A August, who likes to sing about 1993, disappointingly told his interviewers, like manifesto hell, all the party has to do is promise that it will make life better. You know hihn di tek wi fu papisho. You know why, while politicians are on the board making calculations, our business must be to keep our eyes on them.

You better pay attention to manifestos. They aren’t joaki bizniz. In 1998 the PUP promised privatization. I don’t think we realized that meant they were going to sell off our assets lock, stock, and barrel into private hands.