The upcoming general elections are unique in that there will be no issues except for who is honest and who is not. The two major parties share the same free market economic philosophy, both support the church-state education system, and both are led by wealthy lawyers who graduated from St. Michael’s College. In most constituencies, it’s really a choice between personalities where the candidates are concerned.
Partridge Street does have an interest in the Pickstock division, because the extended Pickstock now reaches in the south to a point less than a block from Kremandala. In addition, the incumbent PUP area representative/standard bearer has gone out on a limb to support Lord Michael Ashcroft, the English business mogul who has launched an attack on our establishment.
When the Hon. Godfrey Smith explicitly declared “war” on the United Democratic Party at the PUP national convention on Sunday, July 1, we had the uncomfortable feeling that the PUP Deputy leader was sending a message to us. In this newspaper’s editorial the week before the ruling party’s convention, you see, we had asked the PUP to state at the convention whether they had declared war on Kremandala, which Lord Ashcroft had done, and whether Lord Ashcroft’s wars were the PUP’s wars.
Two or three months ago, Hon. Smith, whose rise to political power in Belize has been meteoric since 2002, accompanied Lord Ashcroft in the Lord’s private jet to the African republic of the Congo. All over Belize, there has been speculation as to what this extraordinary trip was all about. Our sources now say that Ashcroft was using Smith as a black trophy to impress Laurent Kabila, the leader of the Congo. The Congo is one of the richest countries in the world where strategic natural resources are concerned, and the Lord has his eyes on certain things in the Congo. The Uncle Tom presence of the Hon. Smith allowed the European Lord to pose to the Congolese as a liberal, philanthropic, black-friendly investor.
At the PUP’s national convention on July 1 this year, Hon. Godfrey Smith was confirmed as the ruling party’s most powerful Deputy Leader. In the 1998 general election campaign, Hon. Smith had been only the PUP’s general secretary, but he made a well-advised and strategic choice to do special work in 1998 in the eastern section of Lake Independence, the same portion of Lake I which became Pickstock last year. There had been talk that another electoral division would be created in that section of Lake.
As it was, when the PUP Leader Emeritus, the Right Hon. George C. Price, reached the end of the road and announced he would give up the Pickstock seat which had been in the Price/Usher family since 1979, Godfrey Smith stepped in, boldly and dramatically, to challenge the Price/Usher candidate – Robert “Bobby” Usher, son of Miss Jane and nephew of the Leader Emeritus. In a shocker, Smith beat Usher, and beat him badly.
Then he won the Pickstock seat easily in the March 2003 general elections. Four years and four months later, Godfrey Smith is, arguably, a heartbeat away from the Prime Ministership. He proved in the pre-national convention voting that he is stronger in the PUP’s national party council than the other two PUP Deputy Leaders, even though one of those two is the Deputy Prime Minister. This is a remarkable story of rising to political power. It took Said Musa, by comparison, about twenty years to become PUP Deputy Leader. It had taken Florencio Marin almost the same twenty years to achieve that status. It took Godfrey Smith just seven years.
If you read the column Mr. Smith has been writing in the PUP newspaper the last few months, you will see that he is a man of logic and analysis. There is no emotion in this man. He is a Machiavellian. He may even be a Mephistophelian. Lord Ashcroft chose well when he chose Godfrey Smith to defend and promote his interests.
The UDP candidate in Pickstock, Wilfred “Sedi” Elrington, is a very successful lawyer and an extremely wealthy businessman. But as a politician, he is a Methodist. This means he is a decent man. (Methodists, though, are not supposed to gamble, and the PUP say Sedi owns a large chunk of the lotto.) Politics, however, is not for decent men. Politics is for Machiavellians. Sedi has lost three straight times in Pickstock, the first two times as a UDP candidate, and in 2003 as an independent.
The PUP has reached the incredible point where their inside cartel is so wealthy, they feel they can afford to lose a general election. They believe that if Mr. Barrow wins the next general election, they can make it difficult for him to govern after the popular euphoria wears off in a year or two. What this means is that there are people in the top echelons of the PUP who are so wealthy and powerful that the feelings of the Belizean people are not of the highest priority.
A new kind of politics appears to have arisen in Belize. It is not the people who have the power in such a new political order. It is the crazy money which rules in Lucchesi politics.
In the new Pickstock, it is a case of the Methodist versus the Machiavellian. But it is more than that. It is Market Square versus Partridge Street. Lord Ashcroft now walks in the ghetto. Ask Godfrey.