In last week Tuesday’s edition, I wrote a column about the Belize Technical College, and its incorporation into the University of Belize in August of 2000, a column which I promised to complete in last Friday’s edition. Thursday’s general election, however, the counting for which spilled over into Friday morning, pre-empted everything, and I could not fulfill my promise. I will now complete the Technical/UB column.
Last Tuesday, I wrote: “It turned out that the most powerful man in the PUP Cabinet in 2000, the one who controlled the money, had his own plans for Technical and its real estate.” That man was, of course, Ralph Fonseca. A couple months ago, I said to you that when I saw (on television) Ralph Fonseca receive Holy Communion at Roman Catholic Bishop Dorick Wright’s ordination in January of 2007, then I understood why he had become so powerful.
The new UDP government have 25 out of the 31 seats in the House of Representatives. They can do anything they want. But I am willing to make a modestly sized wager that they will not touch the Technical issue. That is because the Roman Catholic Church does not want that issue to be touched.
The Jesuits are religious clerics, but they are the political arm of the Roman Church. They use education for political purposes. That is a historic truth. The success of the Belize Technical College experiment with technical, secular education in British Honduras, constituted a problem for Landivar’s scheme of things educational. These men of God are so powerful, however, that you will never see their hand, not unless you know who is taking Holy Communion.
Saturday, February 9, 2008, was the 39th anniversary of the founding of the United Black Association for Development (UBAD). In December of last year, I began to plan for a Miss Afro type beauty pageant to mark the anniversary, only to discover that the Mose/Kalilah/Mike birthday bash was already scheduled for that night of February 9. Our UEF people, therefore, postponed the pageant plans.
On this (anniversary) Saturday morning as it turned out, I was selling newspapers at our family house on the canalside when I heard on Kalilah’s 9 a.m. news how young black people had been shooting up and killing each other with automatic weapons at a Belize City nightclub and afterwards. The carnage was unprecedented in Belize. This was a worst case scenario for UBAD’s anniversary, and underlined in blood the frightening nature of our young people’s third millennium problems, problems which UBAD had foreseen and sought to prevent.
When I became involved in late December of 1999 in the plan to establish the University of Belize, through the amalgamation of the University College of Belize, Belize Teachers College, Belize Technical College, the Bliss School of Nursing, and the Belize College of Agriculture, I saw that it was, of course, quite an ambitious plan. But the PUP government was new and very powerful, 26 seats out of 29 in the House. And the Prime Minister and leader of government was the same man who, as Minister of Education in 1984, had tried to establish the Belize College of Arts, Science and Technology (BELCAST). That man was Said Musa, my colleague and friend from late 1968. As young so-called radicals, we had believed in nationalistic, government education of the people. If Technical was to be incorporated into UB under the ultimate leadership of the Prime Minister, then Technical would be upgraded and benefit from a serious financial commitment. Belize would begin to educate our own engineers.
Amongst the five tertiary institutions which were to enter the uncharted territory of the University of Belize, the Technical faculty and staff seemed the most rebellious. As chairman of the University College of Belize council, UCB then being the flagship of Belizean tertiary education and de facto leader of the amalgamation, I worked to calm the fears of the Technical people. I did this because I believed in Said Musa, and I therefore believed in the UB project. I, who believed so much in Technical, ended up becoming a part of an initiative which has destroyed it.
In the beginning, I was not one of those who believed that Ralph Fonseca was more powerful than Said Musa. In fact, I remember clearly when Dr. Ted Aranda, leader of the World Garifuna Organization (WGO), in his speech at the opening of the Belize Black Summit in September of 2003, deliberately said, “Prime Minister Ralph….”, in the presence of Mr. Musa, I was embarrassed for Said. I knew, however, that Dr. Ted had good reasons to have issues with the two – Ralph and Said, so I said nothing to the Doc.
I was chairman of the University of Belize for four years, from its foundation in August of 2000 until November of 2004. Ralph Fonseca undermined the university and my chairmanship, and paid to have Opposition UDP news organs campaign against myself and UB. The neoliberal plan was to speculate in the prime real estate of Technical, Teachers College, and the Nursing School. When I became UCB chairman in late 1999, the original 30 acres had already been ripped off under the previous council, and a resolution for Universal’s additional 7 acres, had already been passed. The Technical campus was the plum on the new agenda. It was worth many millions because it was a jewel of a location in the middle of the financial/commercial capital of the nation.
Political parties change, but the power of the Church remains. The demise of Technical was as the Church wanted it. In Belize, Technical was, in a sense, the greatest black educational institution in the second part of the twentieth century. The college was non-denominational. It was government owned. And it was successful, against odds. And so, when Technical weakened in the 1980’s and 1990’s, black people weakened. And when Technical fell, black people fell.
The power of the new government appears unlimited. They are supposed to be Technical-friendly. But there are always election conditionalities. And a political party cannot come to power in Belize unless their leaders have made their peace, their pact, with the Church. I am saying to you that the Jesuits did not want Technical, and they will block any attempt to revive it. Denzil Jenkins knows that, and that is why he raised the Technical issue at the UDP press conference last month, three weeks before the general elections.
On the 39th anniversary of UBAD, black people need to get real here. The country is rich, but we are poor. The world is a competitive and combative world. The Technical alumni should mobilize and bring pressure on the new government. This is the only way to reopen the Technical conversation, because the new government is under pressure from Landivar. This is a given and a constant in the political reality of Belize. I know of which I speak.
Power to the people.