Last week the Hon. Michael Finnegan, UDP area representative for Mesopotamia and one of the most powerful politicians on the Southside of Belize City, wrote a letter to the UDP GUARDIAN (reproduced in THE REPORTER) which essentially indicated that, in the dispute between Kremandala and Lord Michael Ashcroft, he, Mr. Finnegan, was taking sides with the Lord. The reason he gave UDP members and supporters for this position, was that Evan X Hyde was a lot of things which were bad.
In early April, a white man flew to the rescue of Kremandala. All on his own, he wrote a check on April 14 for a thousand dollars to assist in our defence. This is an Englishman who lives on the Hummingbird Highway and recently found out that his wife is seriously ill with cancer. In a matter of a week or so, he will be joining his wife in Italy, where she has flown to receive specialist treatment. He is not sure he will be able to return to Belize for a long time.
I took Mr. Dempsey’s check and locked it in my briefcase. I will not cash it. I will keep it as a memento of a genuine soul who gave an unsolicited donation to assist an organization which is reputed to be racist.
I’ve never met Mr. Dempsey. We’ve just missed each other several times. He is an ardent environmentalist. That is the common ground he shares with Kremandala – our concern for planet earth. I wrote a few weeks ago that the issue of the twenty-first century will not be race. It will be planet earth itself.
I want to take you back to my time as chairman of the University of Belize – from 2000 to 2004. The attacks on myself and the university were frequent and savage during those years, and they were featured in the UDP newspaper and on the UDP radio station. Last year I chronicled the UDP newspaper attacks, as they had happened week to week, in order to point out that all this orchestrated campaign suddenly stopped after a new chairman took over at the University of Belize.
The senior counsel who sprang to the defence of Kremandala in early April has been a UDP supporter all his life. You and I have never known him to be otherwise. The issue for him was not party politics, but a national one.
Within each of the two major political parties, there are many factions. That is why they are referred to as “mass” parties. There was a period when Kremandala was close to the PUP. The only Kremandala program implemented by the ruling PUP during that period of alliance, was the African and Mayan history program. Other than that, it was Ralph Fonseca policies which dominated the PUP during that time. Ralph Fonseca’s policies are almost diametrically opposed to everything that Kremandala stands for. But in a “mass” party, people co-exist, if only temporarily.
UDP writers have charged that my tendency in print is to indict Ralph, thereby implicitly excusing Said. This may be so, but several years ago I pointed out to Mr. Musa, in his backyard, that we had elected him Prime Minister, not Mr. Fonseca; he therefore had the ultimate responsibility, Mr. Musa, that is. This is the code of the sea.
In this particular, column I’ve been trying to give you a sense of how complex and sometimes contradictory the relationships are within the mass parties. In a relevant specific instance, just a couple weeks after a senior UDP-related lawyer came to Kremandala’s rescue, Hon. Finnegan has made a published call for his party supporters to line up against Kremandala.
During his twenty plus years of doing business in Belize, Lord Ashcroft has operated brilliantly. There were always dangerous claws inside his velvet gloves, and now he is slashing and ripping like the wild beast he is when money is involved.
History will perhaps record that the clash between Market Square and Kremandala was inevitable. Ashcroft has bridged the gap between the PUP and the UDP. In other words, there is an Ashcroft Supporters Society which is recruited from the red and the blue, at high levels. What you are yet to see, brothers and sisters, is that there is an Amandla Ngawethu Company which stands in opposition to all that Market Square represents. Let’s do it.
All power to the people.