“In the end, Espat’s downfall might very well be the very source which he considered his strength. Belizeans are quite wary of the strong influence that Evan Hyde and his Zinc Fence sub-culture have over Mr. Espat. Mark Espat and Hyde’s son, Cordel, have become practically inseparable and generally are known to speak with one voice. Looming at all times over the two is the ever Machiavellian and malignant influence of Father X.”
– pg. 10 in The National Perspective, and pg. 29 in The Belize Times, both issues dated Sunday, September 5, 2010
The general elections of 1979 set a precedent of sorts for this newspaper. It was the first general elections in which this newspaper, founded ten years earlier, had been a serious part of the winning campaign. In those elections, the attorneys Assad Shoman and Said Musa, who had briefly been UBAD members and allies in the course of 1969, and who had both been appointed Senators in the PUP’s 1974-1979 administration after being defeated as area representative candidates in 1974 (Shoman in Cayo North, Musa in Fort George), had won their seats and been appointed powerful Cabinet Ministers. The “precedent of sorts” was that, as publisher and editor of Amandala, I did not visit either of these men after their victories in quest of any business plums or board appointments. Although Said Musa and I had been especially close between 1977 and 1979, and he was my primary business partner, I knew that the newspaper was where I had to be, and newspapers must not be compromised by political relationships.
About a month after the 1979 elections, I did visit Belmopan, and sat with both the young Ministers. There was one favor I requested, which was some kind of freedom to operate in Belize City’s Bliss Institute, the only structure with real theater facilities in Belize. Everal Waight, Permanent Secretary for, and a relative of, Education Minister Musa, informed his younger relative in my presence, however, that Mrs. Soli Arguelles had special privileges for her dance troupe, amounting to priority, at the Bliss. I found Mrs. Arguelles’ exalted status to be strange, in view of the fact that she had been an open and prominent campaigner for Manuel Esquivel, Premier George Price’s Freetown opponent in the just concluded elections. Mr. Waight was saying to me, in effect, that Soli had more rights than I.
I had sought the Bliss Institute with the intention of preparing a major theater production, but I immediately then shelved the idea. One of my major flaws is that this is how I react to this type of rejection, with silent vexation. I do not lobby or negotiate or compromise. So, that was that.
Not long afterwards, Mr. Musa informed me that government was proposing to establish a new National Sports Council (NSC), and that he would appoint me the first NSC chairman. The post would include a vehicle, which would be useful for my newspaper business. As I have explained in this column before, things did not work out, and I ended up declining the NSC appointment.
As a part of winning campaigns in 1984 (UDP), 1998 (PUP), and 2003 (PUP), I did not go to Belmopan to seek any special favors. What special favors inevitably do is place you in a situation where you have to reciprocate at a later date. This will damage your newspaper’s credibility, and credibility is paramount in this business. The reading public of Belize knows exactly when you are selling them dreams, so to speak.
What I have tried to do in the first part of this essay is to set the stage for a scenario which has been developing. Last Thursday afternoon, the Amandala editor-in-chief, Russell Vellos, approached me in an almost militant manner. His complaint was that his reporters had been having a hard time getting news about developments in the Opposition PUP leadership drama, while personnel from the television stations and our newspaper competition had been tipped off to major PUP news stories, such as the visit to PUP Leader John Briceño’s Belize City office by the other five PUP parliamentarians, for a meeting which seemed adversarial in nature, on the afternoon of Thursday, August 26.
It appeared to me that Vellos thought Amandala should have been alerted by the two PUP parliamentarians, Lake I’s Cordel Hyde and Albert’s Mark Espat, who are my son and son-in-law, respectively.
I was now really being pressured from two opposite sides. On the one hand, I had been receiving complaints for months from Cordel’s and Mark’s people that they are not being well treated by Amandala, and now, on the other hand, the Amandala editor-in-chief was making a case to me as if the newspaper was being victimized in some way by the two area representatives.
This is a tricky situation. While I, of course, personally support Mark and Cordel, I cannot, as publisher of the newspaper, contribute to a situation wherein any of the newspaper’s professionals are compromised in any way where their independence and integrity are concerned. If Mark declares himself a leadership aspirant for next month’s PUP national convention, then this newspaper’s situation would become even more delicate. Readers rightfully demand that their interests be primary, not the interests of politicians or political parties.
It is almost impossible for the average Belizean politician or political hack to appreciate the amount of professional freedom journalists enjoy at Kremandala. That’s because politicians are always trying to shape public opinion, and towards that end they seek to control news. Kremandala has worked, as a process, for forty-one years and counting, because the professionals who work here are treated as professionals.
Where Evan X Hyde’s political and other opinions are concerned, I have dissemination vehicles, which include this column and most editorials. Recently, I have also been hosting a Wednesday night show which is simulcast on both KREM Radio and KREM Television.
From time to time, individuals or groups become angry at Kremandala. That’s the nature of the business. This is how it is. The key things are that we treat our professionals the way we would like to be treated, as professionals, and that we are not obligated to any political party or government. We have never been, and we will never be, Inshallah.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.