By Dylan Vernon, (REAL STORY #2, 5 October 2023)
By 3 February 1981 when the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on the White Paper held is first (private) meeting, the People’s United Party (PUP) government already knew that it had just about two months before the Constitutional Conference in London to consult the people of Belize on the White Paper and prepare a report for the National Assembly. Otherwise, the tight schedule it had set for independence in 1981 would be in very serious jeopardy.
Pronto! Pronto!
Indeed, there was little time for consultations much less for education. In that first week of February, the PUP government put its still evolving plans to consult the people into high gear. Copies of the White Paper were sent to dozens of organisations and communities with a stated deadline for comments by 25 February 1981 – an eye-popping three-week turnaround! The JSC made public announcements on Radio Belize informing of district-level public sessions and how copies could be procured or read.
So it was that the JSC crammed nine public consultations on the White Paper into a rushed two-week period between 16 February and 2 March of that eventful year of independence. This meant, for example, that the people in the first session in Punta Gorda on 16 February had less than two weeks to review the document even if they got copies. … Read the rest...
Like today, 29th September 1950 was also a Friday. It was a momentous day in the struggle of the people of Belize to create a new sovereign democratic state of Central America in the Caribbean region. The People’s Committee, which had led the people’s revolt against British colonialism since 31 December 1949, gave way to Belize’s first national people’s political party: the People’s United Party. With John Smith elected as Party Leader, Leigh Richardson as chairman, George Price as secretary and Philip Goldson as assistant secretary, all Belize’s key nationalist leaders were together that historic September day 73 years ago. The people were with them and they with the people.