An extraordinary thing happened, or perhaps did not happen, on Wednesday morning’s Wake Up Belize (WUB) show on KREM TV/Radio: Prime Minister/UDP Leader Hon. Dean Barrow refused to cheerlead for the incumbent Belize City Council. Instead, he focused on the change in Mayoral leadership, and his hopes for a new beginning at CitCo.
Now, let’s get something clear. You can jump high, and you can jump low, but Belize City is the financial, business, population, education, and media capital of the nation. Belize City sends 10 of the 31 area representatives to the House of Representatives, strongly influences Belize Rural Central, and influences Belize Rural North. What happens in Belize City has more impact on the rest of the country than what happens anywhere else. Mr. Barrow went so far as to say that he expects to win the March Belize City Council elections because of the UDP’s performance in Belmopan as central government. Whew!
What Wednesday morning did was strengthen indications that Mr. Barrow may call general elections for the same March 7 day as municipal elections. As most of you know, the Prime Minister is reducing electricity rates, writing off some home mortgages, and overseeing the naturalization of a bunch of citizens nationwide. He has also been touring in the districts. If the generals and the municipals are on the same day, that would mean we have a little more than three weeks before the House is dissolved.
The political mood in Belize presently is different from it has ever been. The electorate is more cynical and sophisticated than it has ever been. It is for that reason, we presume, that Mr. Barrow decided he could not bull s— KREM’s viewers/listeners this Wednesday, and decided to come clean where the UDP’s CitCo’s performance under Zenaida Moya is concerned. His candor was unorthodox. In politics, you are supposed to keep a brave face, and lie. Wednesday morning was intriguing.
Under Francis Fonseca’s leadership, the PUP has been playing hard ball. By this we mean that all the standard bearers know who is back in charge of the money, and everybody is just waiting for theirs. At the top, the prevailing philosophy appears to be pre-G7: take it or leave it. In other words, whatever has happened since August of 2004 happened because of intra-party skeptics. “Happy days are here again …”
Where the PNP and the VIP are concerned, one would have thought by now that the principals would have organized a national convention of third parties, and chosen a national leader and a national executive. You cannot go to the Belizean electorate if you are not offering them a chance to form a national government. This is the bottom line. This is the system: first-past-the-post.
We note with interest that the Opposition PUP has not been able to provoke significant agitation within the trade unions. Whereas the trade unions were openly hostile to the ruling PUP in 2008, the ruling UDP is not experiencing that same kind of organized union anger in 2012.
It is for sure things will change once the elections are called. What you are seeing right now is a lot of milling around and jockeying for position, like the start of a boat race. The politicians in the two major parties know that they have to take money and matériel along with them when they go visiting the voters. Some purists preach that one should not sell one’s vote. Cynical Belizean voters see campaign time, however, as the only time, every five years, when they have the politicians at their mercy. Many Belizeans become disciples of Ben Stuart once elections are called: bring di money.