The UDP continues to be divided - and - from all outward appearances - it's only getting worse. And this comes after the elected representative Shyne Barrow, Patrick Faber and Tracey Taegar Panton sat with a church leader to try and iron out their differences.
Since then, the overt, covert, and subversive attacks have continued to escalate - and there was an eruption of hostility on Facebook last night with threats and insults being hurled across the social platform.
Most of the uproar has been about the alleged unconstitutional appointment of regional leader.
That has prompted the UDP's only elected Mayor - Earl Trapp to write to the party Chairman Mike Peyrefitte today citing, quote, "the worrying instability in our Party."
We spoke to him about it today via Zoom:
Jules Vasquez
"Are you genuinely asking your party leader to hear your cry or is it you're trying to create more pressure on him to try and force him out."
Earl Trapp, Mayor, San Ignacio
"I want to make it abundantly clear; I respect the Hon. Shyne Barrow as the leader of the opposition, the leader of the United Democratic Party. All we want is for impartiality as it pertains to the party's constitution. Let us follow the constitution and we cannot go wrong. What I want to see, I want to see Tracy Panton being reinstalled as the leader for Belize City. I want to see the convention take place in all the 31 constituencies thereafter then we can go ahead and elect a regional leader for the 4 regions. In my humble opinion it just will continue to be the weakest opposition ever and then we will not be able to fill our obligation as a strong opposition that is there basically as a strong oversight body. It is so sad that we had that strong leadership prior to this last general election and right after that like it's like from a score 10 to a score 1. We're like nothing right now."
Jules Vasquez
"In your letter, you refer to worrying instability of the UDP. Do you feel that the UDP is at a critical tipping point that it could tip into oblivion or the party could splinter?"
Earl Trapp, Mayor, San Ignacio
"The way we are going at this point and with a conversation I had with an individual this morning, it seems to me that yes, we can get to that point. If we cannot mature and understand that we will not always get or way, someone has to give up something for something. If we cannot understand that then we are nowhere close to getting our party together. We are basically dead like what you just mentioned, we are dead."
We'll keep following the drumbeats of dissent in the UDP.
