The “Silky” Stuart case concluded yesterday in a lightning like manner.
Stuart, who entered Belize weeks ago, was suddenly “found” by the police, taken to Supreme Court where his charges were reduced by Director of Public Prosecutions de facto Gian Ghandi and rendered summary offences, and escorted to the Magistrate’s Court where Chief Magistrate George Singh charged him a total of $1405. Stuart immediately paid the fines and walked away a free man.
Committed on September 19, 1975, for trial in the October sessions of the Belize Supreme Court, Stuart “somehow” gained possession of his passport, which the courts had ordered confiscated, and fled to the United States through Guatemala.
– pg. 1, Amandala no. 655. Friday, January 8, 1982
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At the very highest levels of the legal profession and the two major political parties in Belize, there is almost absolute collaboration. In Belize, the legal profession is a syndicate, a closed shop – there are no mavericks. This is bad enough. After all, nobody ever said lawyers have to fight against each other, nobody ever said they couldn’t settle everything behind closed doors and then just pretend to argue in court. It’s the rule of law, right? Just a small, tiny step to the rule of lawyers. When the lawyers did the same thing (closed the shop) with the PUP and the UDP, however, then the rest of us, the masses of the people, became one big joke for the lawyer/politicians, in the first instance, and the Lord of Chichester, in the second.
The collaboration between the two major parties, with the lawyers as the instruments, became obvious with the sensational Silky Stuart case. At a PUP public meeting in July of 1975, William “Silky” Stuart took out an automatic pistol and began firing at a crowd of hecklers on the sidewalk in front of Central Park. The PUP meeting was being held at the Courthouse Wharf/Plaza. Stuart was arrested and charged, but granted bail by a magistrate who later became a partner in the Musa & Balderamos law firm. Described by Premier Price as a “soldier of the revolution,” Stuart, a former member of the United States military, was spirited from Belize into Guatemala by the PUP, from where he went to California to wait for Independence.
As soon as Independence came in 1981, Stuart returned to Belize, a PUP hero. The PUP hired a partner in the Pitts & Elrington law firm, a firm with impeccable UDP credentials, to defend Stuart. The matter was amicably settled. Stuart had attempted mass murder in public, but he paid a little money and walked. In fact, he was prominent at the rebellious PUP Corozal Southeast gathering at San Joaquin on Sunday, November 23, 2008. I shoot you. I pay you. I walk free.
The most prominent of Stuart’s four victims was Philip Goldson’s most high profile loyalist – Wilfredo “Shubu” Brown, a longshoreman who had been a member of the PUP muscle group, the Blackhawks, in the 1950’s, before he joined Goldson’s NIP in the 1960’s.
When the collaboration between the lawyer/politicians of the PUP and the UDP began to show its ugly head again with the Maritime Areas Act, Goldson had seen it before. He acted swiftly and decisively in 1991, breaking away from the UDP to form the National Alliance for Belizean Rights (NABR).
The highest-ranking victim of PUDP legal/political collaboration became Derek Aikman, destroyed in 1992 when he had been considered Belize’s most sensational political star just eight years before. The PUP and the UDP collaborated to have Derek declared bankrupt in 1992. The Freetown area representative, who had defeated Prime Minister George Price in 1984 and then easily defended his Freetown seat in 1989, was set up by a PUP Cabinet Minister and then guillotined by Lord Michael Ashcroft’s bank. Prominent in the anti-Aikman conspiracy were lawyers who are now at the highest levels of UDP, therefore government, power. Aikman had infuriated the PUP leadership by defeating George Price. He had enraged the UDP leadership by going with Goldson in NABR. His head was forfeit.
Kremandala has always been an annoyance, a bother to the PUDP, because it is not controlled by the financial oligarchy who sign the PUDP’s hefty retainer and campaign checks. In fact, that financial oligarchy includes people who give it to them in bags and in suitcases – cold and illegal cash! These are the clients who are dons. In the legal world, you know, money is money.
The present PUDP conspiracy against Kremandala meets us with our eyes wide open on Partridge Street. We were there in 1975. We were there in 1982. And we were there in 1991. We been here a long time. We don’t know where the bodies are buried, but we have a good idea who buried them.
All power to the people.