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From The Publisher

PublisherFrom The Publisher
Compared to when I started out in 1969, these days it’s kinda fashionable to be a black leader. Some call themselves Kriol. It was just UBAD in those early days. Today, there’s a lot of black chatter in bourgeois places. One of the reasons for this is that the power structure needs “reliable” people to represent the black community and speak for the black community, people whom it can control.
   
I’m saying that as to say this. Black people are still, overall, poor and oppressed, and because of this state of affairs we can’t work together on the most basic of problem solving. Above all, there is the PUP-UDP dichotomy. Then, there are religious disagreements. You have business competition. There are tribal issues. There are personality conflicts and ego disputes and so on and so forth.
   
What happened at the University of Belize during my board chairman time there from 2000 to 2004 was classic black versus black. There were people in the United Democratic Party newspaper and radio systems who were being paid by my People’s United Party opponents to attack the university and my chairmanship. This was done because I am too serious of a black leader, and because the national university is an enormously powerful and important institution.
   
The education of our citizens is one of the greatest responsibilities of our elected governments. In Belize, education is tied up with denominational religion in ways which have made the educational system woefully inefficient from a financial standpoint, and in ways which have led to elitism in the sense that, while a minority can crow, more than half our Belizean children are abandoned educationally by the time they reach puberty.
   
In Belize, denominational religion is more important than citizenry education. This simple fact expresses our dependency and subservience as a people, because these denominational religions are controlled from abroad – from Rome, Canterbury, etc.
   
I decided to challenge this dependency and subservience in late 1999 at the national university, which was then called the University College of Belize (UCB). I wanted to ensure that it was a state institution free of religious bias and bigotry. I honestly did not know about the Musa administration’s plans for the University of Belize (UB) when I went to UCB and became their council chairman in late 1999.
    
Within a matter of weeks, I found out about the Cabinet plan to amalgamate five tertiary institutions, including UCB, in order to establish a national university. The target date was August of 2000. By January of 2000, that amalgamation process had become an outright war. The faculty and staff of the five relevant institutions came for my head in a militant and agitated manner. Many of them were UDP supporters, but the main thing is that they were worried about their job security and employment conditionalities. In real terms, I had become the point man for the amalgamation, and I was attacked as such. Of course, this was most disturbing personally, since I knew how sincere I was and I believed I had a track record in the community. But, it was both the PUP and the UDP coming after me. Behind the scenes, there was religion. The clerics knew who I was and what I stood for, and they did not intend for UB to succeed along the lines I projected.
   
This is a long story, and one that I have not even begun to tell since I walked away from UB in late 2004. The reason I am referring to my UB time now, is because of the instability that emerged in UB last week.
  
At UB, I had two outstanding professionals to aid and advise me. These were Charlie Good as the university security chief and Cedric Flowers as the UB board’s pro bono financial consultant. 
   
I will say this with reference to C. Good. An internationally trained military officer and investigator, Good discovered so much corruption within the university and at such high levels, it was incredible, and sickening. Corruption is a debilitating and sometimes deadly characteristic of state-owned businesses and institutions, and we set out to fight it. But Good had health issues which became aggravated. Plus, some of the corruption was implicitly being condoned at Cabinet level. It was tough.
   
It is ironic that Education Minister Patrick Faber recently fired Charlie Good’s wife from her school warden’s job. It is ironic because it is Patrick Faber himself who is the target of those who are subverting the university. Faber has suggested that government should have more say in the business of education. Some powerful clerics are hostile to this suggestion. I think that these clerics, who supposedly think and act “in the name of God,” are delighted by the national university’s problem. They were similarly pleased when UB and yours truly were being assaulted in the UDP media from 2000 to 2004.
   
The UDP people who were taking PUP money to undermine UB between 2000 and 2004 would say they are black people. In 2009, it is the UDP who are in charge of the university. Parties change where Belmopan power is concerned, but the religious power in Belize remains a constant. This is because Rome does not change, Canterbury does not change, and the ultimate executive religious power resides abroad. 
   
Until we free our minds and the minds of our Belizean children from denominational religious control, then the two political parties here will too often find themselves working against the best interests of the Belizean people in the service of those who think and act “in the name of God.” Those who have eyes to see, let them see.
   
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.

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