In my editorial for our mid-week issue, I sought to convince, pressure even, a few people involved with the National Perspective process, which lasted from late 2009 to late 2011, to step back and examine their situation. You have to do this from time to time in life. If you don’t, you may end up somewhere you didn’t intend to go and looking quite the fool, or, at least, not as intelligent as you thought you were.
There was a mind game going on between the NP and myself. One of their assignments was to make outlandish attacks on myself, in the hope that I would respond in kind. The reason I really didn’t have to respond was because the people of Belize basically ignored the National Perspective. I don’t know that I made it absolutely clear in the editorial that the loyalty of the Belizean people was and is something for which I am very grateful.
There was a larger mission on which the NP was focused, and it had to do with a fundamental power struggle within the People’s United Party. For sure the National Perspective spent most of its lifetime launching attacks on the PUP Leader Johnny Briceño, who had defeated Francis Fonseca in the party’s leadership convention held in March of 2008.
With national elections right around the corner, the PUP is in a state of heightened sensitivity, and the individuals who were the ones behind the National Perspective made it a point to preserve their anonymity. If I were to say now that I believe so-and-so and so-and-so were the ones financing and orchestrating the NP process, that would be speculation, and it would be interpreted as hostile speculation.
The ones who were signing their names to stuff have to figure out for themselves what role they played, how important their role was to their principals, and whether the damage to their credibility was worth the money they were paid. At the end of the proverbial day, you know, everything is business.
They say that while the grass is growing, the cow is starving. When a people are oppressed, and leaders try to fight for their liberation, sometimes there are those who become impatient with the slowness of the progress towards liberation. And, there are those who are just plain greedy. So that, there are always some people who give up on the liberation struggle and join ranks with the oppressors. It happens all the time.
For me, the most important thing was always to prevent my political opponents from controlling my destiny. I mean by that, if I found myself in alliance with the PUP, for example, it was important that I control the extent of my aggression against the UDP. Earlier in my life, I was not doing this. I would overreact to whichever of the major political parties I was fighting against at a specific time. My political opponents were, after a fashion, controlling my destiny.
Mark Espat and Cordel Hyde were allies of Johnny Briceño when he defeated Francis Fonseca in March of 2008. By the October 2010 national convention of the PUP, however, Briceño had turned against Espat and Hyde in a decisive way. It happened that the very same people who were his most prominent allies that October 2010, pulled the rug from under Johnny’s feet a year later. This is how power politics works. Cold-blooded, Jack.
But, eventually all the politicians have to go back to the people. I believe what those people who were financing and orchestrating the National Perspective found out, after $600,000, was that the Belizean people stood firm in their judgement of, and support for, the Kremandala operation. There are no guarantees in life, and especially public life. All you can do is do your best, and hope that the people understand.
All power to the people.
Amandala