The UDP press conference on Wednesday morning left me depressed and at a loss for words, really. As you know, I have been writing for months and months and months about the need for the Opposition party to get itself in shape to do its job. What the UDP press conference amounted to was an admission that, to use the words of their Leader, ?We?re not exactly there yet.? He spoke about the UDP need to get ?fighting fit,? hence the appointment of the new national coordinator, Carlos Perdomo, who resigned from the presidency of St. John?s College to take up the UDP post.

Well, what can I say, except that all the flak I?ve been taking from the UDP newspaper and the UDP radio station are proven unjustified. The UDP called a press conference to tell us that they will set a date for a meeting of the party?s national leaders, which will set a date for a national protest against a number of things which are taking place in the nation. They had, evidently, been ignoring all that I had written. One of their area representatives wrote in their newspaper, over and over again, to tell me that if I ever saw the UDP and a tiger in a fight, I should help the tiger. He was, as usual, holding me up to public ridicule, or attempting to. I think, after Wednesday?s press conference, he should look in the mirror, Jack.

Anyway, as I said on Tuesday night?s Kremandala Show, the statement on Monday evening by the Chamber of Commerce, the Belize Business Bureau, and the trade unions of Belize, calling for a special financial audit of the Social Security Board, had had the effect of speeding up the possibilities, so to speak, for a resolution of the financial/political crisis the nation had been facing for at least 10 days.

On Tuesday, the SPEAR group had finally jumped on the band wagon, so there was much anticipation in the nation where the UDP press conference was concerned. But the UDP was not all there on Wednesday morning. They were not really ready. And they should have been.

The financial/political crisis in Belize is not the fault of the UDP. There was PUP maladministration. At Partridge Street, we did our job. We spoke out against a situation within the PUP administration several months ago. We had nothing to gain, except as Belizean nationalists. We ran the risk of the PUP lashing out at us, when we knew we had no sympathy to get from the UDP, when we knew all we could expect from the UDP was opprobrium.

It was incredible what the UDP have done to us at UB. We were fighting against the most powerful faction of the ruling PUP, but we also had to be defending ourselves against savage attacks, on the same UB matter, from the UDP newspaper and UDP radio. All I could do was shake my head.

Though the unjustified defamation hurt, I did not, in the final analysis, take it personally. The UDP leadership have believed that condemning me will strengthen their chances for general election victory, and this makes a lot of sense. But almost a year ago, following the Belize Black Summit, a leading UDP light suggested that the UDP consider a different approach. He was crowed down, and the lashing of I man continued.

Here?s my point. Is the UDP stronger today than they were one year ago? It did not seem that way on Wednesday morning. In a sense, they were starting all over again. They did not seem to be in a position to step up to the plate.

I will state my position again. The UDP are a large and extremely important organization of Belizeans. The UDP have a constitutional role to play. The free press is also important, but an individual member of the press, such as Kremandala, is not as important as the UDP. So I respect the UDP, and I make a conscious effort to respect the party. If I have sounded disrespectful at any time in the past, my intention was to chide, not to disrespect.

I will not join or support the UDP, but our newspaper, radio and television must try to be as impartial as possible in reporting the news. The nation is bigger than any of the two political parties. There is good and bad in both parties. The members of both parties are Belizeans. We are all Belizeans. There are issues which are, above all, Belizean. We believe this, and we have believed this since 1969.

Amandala. Power to the people.