Last Friday evening the PUP had set a deadline for candidates to apply who wished to contest their standard bearer conventions, which have to be held by June 30. We won?t take anything as etched in stone, because both parties nowadays change anything at anytime. The more interesting reports are as follows. Sylvia Flores will not run again in Dangriga. Austin Waight is the only candidate for Mesopotamia, as is Carolyn Trench-Sandiford the only candidate for Collet. Ralph will run for Belize Rural Central standard bearer, but Dolores Balderamos-Garcia submitted an application for the division. Jenny Craig and Oscar Rosado applied for Port Loyola. In the Orange Walk District, Dave Burgos and Ismael Cal are being challenged.
Inside the UDP, as you gather from a Delroy Cuthkelvin article in this issue of Amandala, there are elements which will ?flex? at the May 28 national convention. These are essentially people who are not Dean Barrow stooges, so it is for sure there will be dissent on May 28. Barrow?s strongest ally, Mesopotamia area representative Michael Finnegan, had his second major operation in as many years last month, so Finnegan may not be at 100 percent at the convention. On the plus side for Mr. Barrow, all indications are that Pickstock?s Wilfred ?Sedi? Elrington will be his ally.
Mr. Barrow is very mindful of what happened to the UDP in 1979 after they had won a landslide Belize City Council victory two years earlier, in December of 1977. The UDP suffered a shocking general election defeat in 1979. There are two great differences between then and now. The first is that the 1977 victory was confined to Belize City, whereas the March 1, 2006 victory was national. And secondly, in 1978 the ruling PUP had introduced the 18-year-old vote, which included a national re-registration and the introduction of voters? identification cards with pictures.
The UDP City Council landslide in 1977 gave the party an exaggerated sense of their own popularity, because there had been UDP voter fraud which most of their supporters did not know about. The introduction of ID cards with pictures prevented the type of fraud which had occurred in 1977.
Mr. Barrow in May 2006 does not have an exaggerated sense of the UDP?s popularity. He is positive, to be sure, that the PUP are detested by the electorate. So he is very optimistic about 2008, but the history of the 1979 upset includes more than factors completely external to the party.
The 1979 UDP Leader, Dean Lindo, had replaced the very popular Philip Goldson in 1974 as Opposition Leader, but the circumstances of Lindo?s accession to power, like the circumstances of Macbeth?s rise to the crown, were questionable. With the UDP the odds-on favorite to win power in 1979, ambitious leadership elements inside the UDP seized on the Jim Jones scandal around March/April of 1979 to undermine Lindo?s leadership. There is absolutely no evidence that Goldson supported the undermining in any way. Lindo reacted with vexation to the questioning of his leadership, so the undermining led to division at the highest levels of UDP leadership. Hence, defeat.
Mr. Barrow will, the party hopes, try to be careful in how he handles UDP dissenters. He himself became UDP Leader in a sort of emergency succession to the resigned Dr. Manuel Esquivel. At the time, shortly after the UDP?s disastrous 1998 general election loss, nobody really wanted to be UDP Leader. In a sense, Mr. Barrow did the party a favor. But, strictly speaking, the Barrow leadership has never been subjected to the heat of an open national convention. It appears that there will be heat on May 28.
The PUP, for their part, are in worse shape than their leaders realize. The PUP have lost all touch with the non-mercenary, non-partisan segment of the population who decide elections. It may be that a PUP strength, their strong esprit de corps and team unity at the top, is becoming a weakness. There has been no panic at the PUP top. But there should have been more than routine concern. After March 1, there should have been restructuring.
PUP self-assurance, verging on contempt, is born of disrespect for the UDP?s political professionalism, or lack thereof. The PUP know that the UDP know how to lose. They are depending on the UDP?s willingness to self-destruct. May 28 is very, very significant for the UDP. And because that is so, then May 28 is also very, very significant for the PUP.