Darrel Bradley Sets Conditions For Political Return
Could Darrel Bradley be preparing for a political comeback? The former Belize City mayor has stayed off the ballot since narrowly losing Caribbean Shores to Kareem Musa by just fifty-six votes in 2015. Bradley says he still has leadership ambitions and could return to the political arena, but only if the United Democratic Party presents a clear and meaningful reform agenda for Belize.
Darrel Bradley
Darrel Bradley, Former Belize City Mayor
“I think that that would be something that would be not too long in the future, like that’s something definitely that I would, it’s my desire to do that. I wouldn’t say, I would say, but it’s my desire, and one of the things that I would say is, and again, it’s a responsibility that I take very seriously, and I think that in terms of the change that we need in this country, it’s not a change that we would labor on an individual. It’s a lot of responsibility and that’s a responsibility, of course, that I am prepared to take on, but that’s a significant responsibility, and I think that the change has to come from a cadre of people who are really committed to high ideals of moving the country forward and principled leadership, and I think that will include a Darrel Bradley, but that may and must include many other people who will be shoulder-to-shoulder in the building of this reformed Belize, and so like there’s a lot of things that we really have to focus on, and I think we need a reform-centered United Democratic Party. So we’ve talked about protests, and we’ve talked about a lot of issues, but we need to really double down on the idea of what are the set of concrete policies that we will promote as a political party or as a grouping of social partners to ensure that we have change in this country, and again, it’s not rocket science. Many countries struggle with these things, and there’s model legislation about campaign finance reform. There’s model whistleblower legislation. We have signed on to UNCAC. There’s a lot of things that are already there in our laws, but we just need to strengthen the enforcement arm of the legislation, and we need to hold our individual leaders and ourselves accountable.”
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