Dickie Bradley has a son, Adrian, who is mentally disturbed. When the young man is mentally agitated, which is when he is smoking and/or drinking, he will come by my yard and make a scene. A couple years ago he used stones and a stick to try to break the windows and windshield of my vehicle. Last year he was shot in one of his legs by a policeman.
Mentally disturbed citizens can be dangerous people. Sonia Faux, who was Derek Aikman’s number one fan and campaigner, was murdered by her mentally disturbed son about twenty years ago. In the middle 1970’s, a mentally disturbed bicycle-cart man called “Actually” shot and killed a popular fisherman, one of my Mike’s Club friends known as “Punch,” or “Puppy.”
I have noted that when Dickie is mentioned in this newspaper, his son “trips.” But Dickie was a very, very big man in the government and politics of Belize from 1998 to 2003, and his policies and decisions have to be discussed, in the national interest, from time to time. The Ministry of Housing issue raised by the Hon. Michael Finnegan in the House of Representatives on Friday morning targeted Rufus X, but that matter occurred during Dickie’s term as Housing Minister, which was from August 1998 to March 2003.
The Housing Ministry is one in bureaucratic turmoil in part because there have been six Housing Ministers in the last seven years – Dickie Bradley, Cordel Hyde, Sylvia Flores, Servulo Baeza, Ralph Fonseca, and Michael Finnegan.
Dickie Bradley and I were very good friends. I stood godfather for one of his sons, who died as a baby while Dickie was studying law in Jamaica. Dickie’s wife, Shirl, and my wife, Audrey, were very close, and are still good friends. But Dickie was operating at a higher level than myself from a long time ago. Understand that to mean whatever you want to understand that to mean.
In 1992, my first cousin, Georgia Belisle, was slated to succeed Owen Morrison, who had reached retirement age, as Principal of the legendary Belize Technical College. At that specific time, Cecil “Chubby” Reneau was Principal of the Center for Employment Training (CET). The way the story leaked out, the PUP government wanted to find a position for Carlos Perdomo, so they moved Chubby to Technical as Principal, and appointed Perdomo the Principal of CET. Georgia Belisle was pushed aside. It was an insult to her. She and her immediate family believed that it was Dickie Bradley, the then Permanent Secretary in Said Musa’s Ministry of Education, who had orchestrated the shenanigans between CET and Technical.
Georgia Belisle’s father, the late Buck Belisle, and I were exceedingly close. He was my mentor and role model. He was very angry at Dickie. He knew Bradley and I were very good friends. So, my uncle Buck was angry at me too. It was impossible for me to explain to my uncle that Dickie Bradley operated in a world which was completely separate from me and Kremandala. And, he was operating at a higher level than myself, from a long time ago. Understand that to mean …
When the PUP began to quarrel over their party assets in 2008, it was revealed that the FM 2000 radio station (now the PUP’s Positive Vibes) was majority-owned by the former PUP kingpin, Ralph Fonseca. When FM 2000 had held its opening ceremonies in 1994, Dickie Bradley was the master of ceremonies. On that specific occasion, listening to those ceremonies as they were broadcast, I became convinced that I had to start “sleeping wid mi own eye,” as our people say.
The interesting thing about what happened with Carlos Perdomo, Chubby Reneau and Georgia Belisle was this: Carlos Perdomo had been the UDP Prime Minister’s Permanent Secretary and Hon. Manuel Esquivel confidant in the first UDP term of office, from 1984 to 1989. Why did a PUP government go to such an extent to accommodate Mr. Perdomo as they did in 1992? For sure they considered George Belisle dispensable. They treated her like a rag. The top brass at Technical were generally considered unsympathetic to the PUP, but Georgia was not a political activist. She was a classy professional.
Rufus X and Dickie were close, and I imagine they are still good friends. Following Finnegan’s attack on Rufus, I have asked a couple people about the charges. They point to the bureaucratic confusion in the Housing Ministry, and their private opinion is it would be difficult to prove anything.
But Hon. Michael Finnegan chose the precise same speech on Friday morning to “big me up” in the House. His colleagues were stunned. The House went into shock, because Michael and I have been politically hostile for a long time. But Finnegan was a member of UBAD, of which I was president, from 1969 to 1972, and I appreciate his “big up.” At the same time, I will have you know that Rufus X owns 20 percent of KREM Radio and 10 percent of Kremandala, Ltd. For these, and other reasons, I owe Rufus my loyalty.
At some very high levels in Belizean politics, the UDP and the PUP know how to work in tandem. Ask Derek Aikman. In the matter of Georgia Belisle, the issue of Carlos Perdomo is a most intriguing one. Who lobbied for him in the PUP in 1992? Which PUP don owed Perdomo favors, and what kind of favors? And, to take the analysis further, to whom in the PUP would Carlos Perdomo, the UDP Minister of National Security, himself owe favors?