You are a young person, so you may say, what is this old man talking about, which UBAD, there is no such thing. In a sense, it is true that there is no such thing, but if the electoral system were a system of proportional representation, then this UBAD would be a big thing. Still, in a sense UBAD is still a thing, albeit a small one.

In the 1974 general elections, the UBAD Party, in its last act of public life, offered a single candidate ? Evan X Hyde, for the Collet division. Collet was a hotly contested constituency in 1974, apart from the fact that general elections in Belize are always intense processes.

The PUP candidate was V. Harry Courtenay, who had defeated the NIP?s Edward Flowers to win the seat in 1969. The UDP candidate in 1974 was Kenneth Tillett, who was considered a new ?golden boy? in the UDP. Mr. Tillett?s campaign manager, incidentally, was Michael Finnegan.

In Collet in 1974, I received a total of 89 votes, which was 4.1 percent of the total votes cast. You can look at 89 votes and/or 4.1 percent in a lot of different ways, and, for sure, if you are a member of one of the two major parties, you can ridicule that small minority of people.

Fifteen years later, my UBAD friend, Rufus X, found himself locked out of the candidate selection process of the ruling UDP, a party he had been supporting from its birth in September of 1973. As a result, Rufus X decided to run in the Belize Rural North constituency as an independent candidate. As usual, in 1989 the general elections were hot. The UDP candidate was Sam Rhaburn, who had defeated the incumbent PUP representative, Fred Hunter, in 1984. The PUP candidate in Belize Rural North in 1989 was Maxwell Samuels.

In 1989 in Belize Rural North as an independent candidate, Rufus X received a total of 65 votes. The very interesting aspect of this total is that, in percentage terms, it was about exactly the same (3.9 per cent, to be exact) as Evan X Hyde?s Collet total in 1974.

The severe advantage under which a general election candidate who is not a candidate for one of the two major political parties operates, is this. The voters know that an independent candidate cannot form a part of a government, so there are no benefits in terms of budget allocations, lands, jobs, or anything material that can possibly be gained from supporting such a candidate. As the election date draws closer, the independent candidate will find that more and more of his friends and supporters will tell him, that while their personal feelings for the independent candidate remain the same, they feel that to vote for him would amount to wasting their vote.

Belize?s single member electoral system, then, makes it such that a serious politician must belong to one of the two major political parties.

Let us consider another scenario, however. Let us say, for argument?s sake, that there are more than 4 percent of the voters who are for a third opinion more than they are for the red or the blue. Let us say, further, that such a third opinion publishes the leading newspaper in such a national situation, and has done so for 25, 30 years, and let us go on to suggest that the third opinion has added a couple more percentage points of support over all those years. Then you should be informed that six percentage points the other way would have changed general elections in 1979, 1989 and 1993.

So, while most believe UBAD does not exist and while UBAD is an object of ridicule for some people, there are a few of us who think we exist, and what we want to say to our people is this. If this social security thing pisses you off the way it pisses us off, and you want to demonstrate on Saturday to show your feelings, we UBAD will not look at you as any kind of politician.

The UDP have been at pains to say that Saturday?s is not a UDP demonstration, and we explained to you in our Tuesday editorial this week that it is not as simple as their just saying it. Still, we will free up those of our UBAD people who want to demonstrate on Saturday. If the UDP want to count the UBAD people as UDP, it?s no skin off our back. We know who our people are. Time is the proof to all things.

Amandala. Power to the people.