After taking control of the People’s United Party in an August 1956 putsch at Riverside Hall in Belize City, George Price appeared to lock down leadership of the party for the next 40 years. The key to his power was his probity where the public finances of Belize were concerned.
If we examine matters carefully, however, Mr. Price lost control of the PUP after the December 1984 general elections, wherein the PUP lost for the first time in national elections, and did so disastrously. In those elections, Mr. Price lost his Freetown seat to a UDP newcomer, Derek Aikman. The PUP era appeared to have come to an end.
Actually, it was only the substantive George Price era that had come to an end. That much is evident, but only in retrospect. The energy that revitalized the PUP between 1985 and 1989 came from Ralph Fonseca and Glenn Godfrey, who had been protégés of Mr. Price’s from their childhood. This duo worked along with Said Musa, who had also lost his seat in December of 1984, but who had remained active in the PUP after his partner of more than two decades, Assad Shoman, left electoral politics to lead SPEAR.
Fonseca, Godfrey and Musa knew that Mr. Price’s fabled mystique was still hard political currency in which they could trade. They convinced Mr. Price to move from Freetown to the Pickstock constituency, which had been defended in 1984 by Mrs. Jane Usher, Mr. Price’s sister. Miss Jane, the Holy Redeemer Credit Union legend, had been brought into electoral politics in 1979 to secure the Pickstock seat, which she had done. (In 1974, the PUP’s Adolfo Lizarraga had barely defeated the UDP’s Paul Rodriguez, by just 4 votes. Miss Jane widened the margin.) But she had no problem moving aside, after winning twice, for older brother George.
The PUP won narrowly in 1989. The UDP had frittered away their large 1984 majority because their leadership had ignored the UBAD faction which had energized the original UDP in 1974. The UDP rudely pushed Rufus X aside in 1988. In 1989, the new PUP, for their part, reached out publicly to the other UBAD faction, that which had saved the PUP in 1979, by supporting this newspaper’s demand for a radio license.
In his almost three decades of rule, from 1957 to 1984, Mr. Price had not sought to enrich himself. He used his power to secure his nephews and nieces, afterwards his grandnephews and grandnieces. The Price family was (and is) monolithic in its PUP politics.
The 1989 to 1993 PUP administration, however, saw Ralph Fonseca and Glenn Godfrey begin those games for which they became infamous between 1998 and 2004. During that term of PUP office, insiders saw that the unelected Minister of State, Senator Ralph Fonseca, was actually running Mr. Price’s Finance Ministry. The old man had become a figurehead.
The PUP called general elections 15 months early in June of 1993. Mr. Fonseca was impatient to become elected in Belize Rural Central, a new constituency. The Belize Constitution forbids an unelected individual from becoming the Minister of Finance. Ralph had seen his Promised Land between 1989 and 1993, and now he wanted it all. He wanted to run the money.
When the PUP lost narrowly in 1993, however, those who had been pulling Mr. Price’s strings, decided that now the old man really had to go. Mr. Price was accordingly replaced by Mr. Musa in 1996.
In the PUP good times that rolled between 1998 and 2004, it became public knowledge, beginning in July of 2004, that the public finances of Belize were being misused, to put it mildly. Political storms began to buffet the government, but inside the PUP ship itself, stability reigned. This was because Ralph Fonseca and Said Musa were milking the George Price mystique for all it was worth.
Mr. Price has allowed himself to be used at Independence Hall, and has turned a blind eye to the financial scandals involving the Musa administration, because the welfare of his family was not being affected. In doing what he continues to do, that is, lend his political and financial reputation to the bankrupt incumbent leadership of the PUP, Mr. Price believes that he is serving the interests of the Price family, interests which he has served all his adult life.
On Wednesday afternoon of this week, the people of Belize finally saw the turmoil within the PUP spill out on to the streets. This was because a growing number of the PUP faithful are realizing that the party was used for the enrichment of a select few, specifically and especially between 1998 and 2004. A growing number of the PUP faithful have come to believe that, for the party to return to political credibility and success, then changes have to be made.
Mr. Price’s reputation within the PUP has protected the incumbent leadership for years. The evidence now is that that incumbent leadership has failed so dramatically, that Mr. Price supports them at increasing danger to his own reputation.
In closing this essay, we wish to consider a specific situation – that of Anthony Sylvestre, Jr., the PUP standard bearer for Queen’s Square. The young man’s father has been Mr. Price’s personal aide for decades. Anthony Sylvestre, Sr., is a “real PUP.” We feel that Anthony Sylvestre, Jr., because of the realities involving his father, simply had to do as he did, which is to say, publicly support the PUP status quo. We submit, however, that he is making a mistake. According to Shakespeare, there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. On such a full sea we may now be afloat. The people shall decide.