By Breaking Belize News Staff (HP): Former Belmopan area representative John Saldivar has weighed in on the generational conversation stirring Belizean politics, arguing in a social media post that young leadership is neither new nor novel, and that the real test of any politician, young or old, is integrity under scrutiny.
Saldivar grounded the argument in history, including a chapter of his own rarely told. Recruited in 1992 at age 25 by then UDP Chairman Dean Lindo to become the party’s Cayo South candidate, he left on study leave to Mankato State University in May 1993, only for Prime Minister George Price to call snap elections weeks later. Party Leader Manuel Esquivel then struck a deal with NABR Leader Philip Goldson that handed Cayo South to an NABR candidate for the UDP/NABR coalition. “I therefore did not get my chance to be the candidate until 1998. I was still young at thirty one,” he wrote.
The precedents run deeper, he noted: Derek Aikman defeating a sitting Prime Minister in Freetown at 25 in 1984, Salvador Fernandez emerging as a Cayo star at 24 the same election, and Patrick Faber entering the House at 22 in 2003. “Injecting youth and energy into political parties is a part of the natural process of political evolution,” Saldivar wrote. “It’s not new politics versus old politics. It is good politics versus bad politics.”
His closing carried both blessing and warning. Wishing newcomers luck, he cautioned that some politicians “start out good, they even start out young, and then turn out to be bad,” and that success “will not be because of your age but because of the integrity, honesty, and vision you bring to the table and how you stand up to scrutiny once given the power.”
The post Saldivar says youth in politics is nothing new, integrity is the real test appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
By Breaking Belize News Staff (HP): Former Belmopan area representative John Saldivar has weighed in on the generational conversation stirring Belizean politics, arguing in a social media post that young leadership is neither new nor novel, and that the real test of any politician, young or old, is integrity under scrutiny. Saldivar grounded the argument
The post Saldivar says youth in politics is nothing new, integrity is the real test appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.