By Dylan Vernon, TIME COME #13, 25 September 2024, Belize City, Belize.

Twenty-nine posts later, TIME COME will be one year old this Sunday, 29th September. I am using the occasion, to re-post my very first and launch article of 29 September 2023, mostly for new subscribers and viewers. (Don’t buy 29 in the Boledo). Having put little effort in marketing, I appreciate that readership has grown steadily, especially over the past six months. I was a bit surprised that the most viewed post, by far, was my immediate last one: Septemba Kanfyoozhan: Rethinking the 10th. Maybe it was re-shared widely by both the ‘yays and the nays’. Maybe it was because it is September — the month during which so many of Belize’s major political historical events, both triumphant and dispiriting, have happened. Among the latter was the death of George Price, Father of the Nation, on 19 September 2011. Another happened 55 years before that when Price was at the pinnacle of his early career in 1956.

In my first TIME COME article, I omitted one of the most consequential September dates in the history of the nationalist movement: 27 September 1956. On this deflating day, the last three of the ‘big four’ nationalist leaders, and founders of the People’s United Party (PUP) split apart for good: George Price, Philip Goldson and Leigh Richardson. John Smith had resigned as PUP party leader in 1951, to be replaced by Richardson. Price replaced Richardson in 1956. As Assad Shoman put it in his guest article, You Need Yesterday to Make Revolution Today, Belize’s independence movement divided in 1956 and this (with the Guatemalan claim) impeded us from “real decolonisation.”

Imagine for a moment if Price, Goldson, Richardson, Smith, and others, like Nicolas Pollard and Elfreda Reyes, had not parted ways in the six years after the PUP formed in 1950? How different would things have been? Would independence have come earlier? Would the road to independence have been less divisive? Would we have made more out of independence? Would our political parties be more ideologically distinct? Would we be more decolonized today with a people’s constitution? Would the current constitutional review (People’s Constitution Commission) have been needed at all?  And would some of us be having to worry about the prospect of the Commission sputtering out uninspiring and conservative platitudes? Some would say these are ‘throw away questions’ since we will never know.

In political science, there is a concept called ‘path dependency’. It basically means that similar countries with similar histories and governance systems tend to go down the same basic political path. For example, the former colonies of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean all had a ‘1956 moment’ when nationalist parties splintered and partisan divisions became more about personalities and power than decolonisation. Of course, the British were determined to impose their two-party dominant model, even if it meant pouring gasoline on minor sparks of divergent local opinions.

So, if not in 1956, Belize’s partisan split would likely still have come. But perhaps, a later coming would have meant less distraction from the original freedom and social justice goals of the national movement. One can only dream. My article below, from 29 September last year, provides some context to all this.

Before sharing it, a short aside: Several people have queried why I am doing all this TIME COME writing ‘fu free’. I believe they mean free only in the capitalist sense of the word; i.e., no financial profit.  But in a civic sense, it’s not really ‘fu free’.  While the posts take a bit of time and effort, I gain both knowledge and joy from it. It’s also giving back some of what my family, Belize and the world have given me — formative experiences, educational opportunities, travel, purposeful work, meeting stimulating people. It’s doing what I love. We all have our ‘thing’. Like needing to breathe, I have to read, to research, to write, to record history, to share knowledge, to ask hard questions, and to advocate. Some have suggested doing a podcast or other medium that reaches more people. Perhaps in the future, but for now just writing is my comfort zone. So, look out for more articles in TIME COME’s second year. Maybe a book will come out of it.

RE-POST OF TIME COME #1, Launch Post by Dylan Vernon, 29 September 2023, Belize City, Belize).

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.

A People’s Moment

From the thousands who flocked to public meetings and joined the new party, to the strong union support and to the popular and progressive calls for independence, freedom and justice, it is clear that, for a moment in their political history, Belizean women and men were united and at the center of making democracy. By 1954, the people won the victory of universal adult suffrage and the right to elect their own leaders under a new Constitution. There was hope in the people that much more could be seized in this ‘50s’ moment.

Unfortunately, the promise of that people’s moment would begin to fade. It took ten years after 1954 for Belize to achieve its self-government Constitution and another 17 long years from 1964 to win independence in 1981 – a total of some 31 years after the launch of the People’s Committee.

Opportunities Lost

Apart from the short-lived ‘60s’ in Belize, when the cañeros movement, the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) and the People’s Action Committee (PAC) challenged the establishment, the militant democracy of the people gradually dissipated. It was, in large part, the victim of both the divide and rule tactics of the British and of the heavy anchor on progress caused by the Guatemalan claim. By independence in 1981, the PUP itself, as well as opposition political parties, had begun to forget what it really meant to have ‘people in democracy’.

As I have argued elsewhere, the challenges of overcoming deep colonial legacies as well as the severe limitations that international political and neoliberal forces can place on nation-building aspirations have often been under-estimated. However, over time, both Belize’s political leadership and ‘the people’ also share part of the blame for Belize not living up to the ideals and promise of the 1950s nor of independence. These colonial, international and local factors were certainly at play in the past processes of constitutional building and reform.

For reasons that I will discuss more in future pieces, the political parties as well as the people of Belize did not fully seize the opportunities to decolonize Belize’s Constitution either in the lead up to independence in 1981 nor in the first comprehensive constitutional review by the Political Reform Commission (PRC) in 1999. Now, in 2023, 73 years after the start of the nationalist movement and the people’s democracy moment it inspired, Belizeans are being told that they have another historic opportunity to create a people’s Constitution. The People’s Constitution Commission is already ten months into its 18-month mandate to lead a people’s review of the Constitution of Belize.

Is this enough time? Can this process really result in a new or reformed people’s Constitution that goes to the Belizean people in a referendum? What are the lessons from history? What kind of Constitution does Belize need to help put people back in democracy? Can Belize learn from other constitutional reform processes such as those happening now in Barbados and Jamaica?

Time Come!

These are the kind of questions and issues I will aim to address in this new blog: TIME COME: Put People back in Democracy. It will be my main forum to contribute to these critically important reform debates in Belize and the region. Independent. Non-partisan. Research-based. No bells and whistles — just straight informed ‘talk’!

On a regular basis, I will post new informational pieces (under the tag Real Story) on past constitutional developments as well as new advocacy pieces (under the tag Time Come) on my own ideas for reform. Now and again, I will post a past article or presentation of mine and, at some point, offer guests to submit a piece for consideration.

The challenges to create a new Constitution are formidable. Other huge issues of development and survival dominate the national agenda. The Belizean people will have to be convinced that constitutional and political reforms can help improve their livelihoods.

In the four years before the Political Reform Commission commenced its work in January 1999, civil society organisations, led by the Society for the Promotion of Education and Research (SPEAR), had conducted a comprehensive education and advocacy campaign for political and constitutional reform. There was therefore a readymade base of public awareness and popular demand for reform. This is not the case with the current People’s Constitution Commission. The Commission and a few other institutions are now attempting to stimulate both within a limited time mandate. As one of the people, I offer this blog as my personal contribution to this critically important endeavour.

There is much unfinished business and lessons from the ‘50s’, ‘60s’ and ’80s’ moments to motivate and inform any project to re-make Belize! Time come to put people back in democracy!

Look out for my future posts and check out the site at http://timecome.info.

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