You don’t have to be a pundit to figure out why Dean Barrow worked so hard to get Attorney General Peyrefitte into the UDP leadership race with Faber and Saldivar. The story there is that PM Barrow is desperate for one with the mastery of communication to deflect from all the terrible failures of his party, and neither Faber nor Saldivar have the gab.
He, Barrow, might look at Pere and see himself in the mirror, as he was 40, 50 years ago, and as he is now, Master of Games still, and, as Hubert E said, All Glitter and no Substance, still.
Barrow failed in the plot to make Pere leader of the UDP, this time, and he went to such limits to install him. The man really must see himself in Pere. If he is off the mark, it isn’t by far. Hear thee, hear thee, Citizens of the Bay acknowledge that Pere takes the crown as PM Barrow’s successor; henceforth he is Master of the Games II, the unsurpassed All Bluster and Delay.
Our present Prime Minister will take a hammering from serious Belizeans for allowing the UDP 2012-to-present to become a bigger monster than PUP 1998-to-2005 was, but the frivolous among us will continue to congratulate him for his color, the entertainment he brings whenever he calls one of his heavily controlled press conferences, or when he slides back into his base self in the House to lambast his opponents across the aisle.
If you didn’t know, after being cruelly dohblbenk by Faber and Saldivar in Port Loyola, Pere has emerged as the man who will take control of the powerful seat of chairman of the party. He is set to replace the devilish Alberto August, who enjoyed major success in his chairmanship, albeit at a time when the PUP was still struggling to put behind them their ignominious attempts between 1998 and 2005 to steer all the country’s resources permanently into their control, a sinister scheme that the UDP has copied beyond the letter.
August is able, but he also had the advantage of operating while Master of the Games I was in full sway, as PM of the country. We can’t let go of this August so quickly. Nationalistic minds want to know if he voluntarily stepped aside. There was a time when no one needed to know what went on inside the Red Party because they were shut out of government in their foundation years, but ever since George Price ran the country brok in 1984, the UDP has been a party hogging up the titles. I promise to keep reading the Guardian, and as I get the dirt on August I will regurgitate it. Wait, that info will pop up in the Belize Times. You know I keep my eye on them, ever since I learned what the governor found out they were up to.
It is likely that Pere idolizes Barrow. He, Pere, has for sure worked at word games, or he just had the natural ingredients and the rest came from association with the crowd … the understudying of the wily Dean Lindo, and the friendships with the rude Joe and the sinister Barrow and the fiery Juliet. Glory, did I forget Finnegan before he reformed?
Barrow had exalted Pere before. Our hero went from innocent protester at the National Assembly building to Speaker of the House. From there, after he had successfully gotten a targeted elected member thrown out the House meeting, he went to higher heights — Attorney General. And after attempts to make him leader of the party failed because of the major collusion that is yet to be explored, he is set to take over the other most powerful position, Chairman of the Red Party.
If any think that Party Chairman is insignificant, just hark back to 1984 to 1989, when then Prime Minister Manuel Esquivel scattered the chances of his party in the 1989 election because he would not have Dean Lindo continue in the powerful post. If Dean Lindo had won the chairmanship, Rufus X would have replaced Samuel Rhaburn in Belize Rural North and the UDP would have won the 1989 election, but the USA would have intervened with a coup to block Rufus X getting fitted out in suit and necktie.
Looking at this Pere in his role as Master of Delay, if you read Amandala’s Friday story about the year in review, we see that from February last year AG Michael Peyrefitte has been on full simpa with cyberbullying laws. If you are looking for an excuse for him, it could be that he doesn’t believe in a legal solution there. That was his message when he declared, “if yu don’t want your naked body ogled on public show, don’t take pictures in the buff.” Okay, that’s not verbatim. I didn’t go there because if I had run with his full color, the segment might have been excised.
Only a UDP with blinders could find an excuse for the delay on getting the laws lined up to make us satisfy the UNCAC. Oh wait, there is one. BPM president Bobby Lopez said that if we had the law in place every jack san av a dem would be in jail. Hmm, maybe that is not to the letter what Bobby said; maybe he didn’t say that they are ALL quivering under blenkit in fear of the day when they will pay for their sins against the people’s treasury.
In Belize, we of course never signed on to UNCAC along with other countries back in 2003, because we are good, we thought. We thought we didn’t need outside scrutiny, but after too many years of no transparency and accountability in government, the Belizean people got frustrated and the BNTU saw the people’s pain and grasped the government’s hand, put a pen in it, and forced a signature. Bah, the government, never out of aces, handed a bottle of white-out to Pere.
If the UDP was half what they promised, we would not have needed to call on the UN to help us stomp out corruption. If the UDP was just half what they promised, they would have dissolved government the moment they knew that major players in the party had compromised our immigration system. The measures we were forced to put in to satisfy people who have a keen eye on how we operate have made many born ya Belizeans feel disrespected. Watch how many hours we have to squeeze up like sardine een a tin at the building corner of New Road and Hyde’s Lane, to access our birth papers. They did us wrong.
Last week Pere the Master Blusterer was on full display when he spoke to Channel Seven’s Jules Vasquez about an accusation made by the Opposition Leader that drug planes land here and some big people in government know about it. The AG huffed and puffed that all talk is empty without evidence.
It is on record how Pere behaved in 2018 when the US government said we have weak law enforcement and an ineffective judicial system, and these weaknesses led to poor success in reducing the drug business. See Pere bluster again. The AG hollered that the US can’t back up their talk with evidence. Braa, the people just said we have an ineffective justice system, and you are talking about evidence.
This UDP, what a shame they have become. My, this group that was Belize’s great hope for honesty and transparency in government came like sheep and turned out to be the worst kind of wolf. They are the kind who eat up graama and then tek over the house, an refuse to get out.
Pride is gone from dis ya crowd; as bad as they mess up they are desperate to hold on. Master of Games I is putting his bet on Master of Games II.