Hon. Mark Espat will serve as Minister of National Development, Investment and Culture.

Hon. Cordel Hyde will serve as Minister of Defence, Housing, Sports and Youth.

The National Development and Investment portfolio includes various aspects of Belize?s economic development agenda, including Social Investment Fund and Basic Needs Trust Fund projects, investment promotion, as well as responsibility for export processing zones and commercial free zones.

As Minister of Defence, Housing, Sports and Youth, Hon. Cordel Hyde will take responsibility for the Southside development projects ? a major component of which will be low cost, affordable housing, infrastructural improvement and urban renewal.

– GOB press release –

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Nov. 3, 2005

Since June, the Prime Minister/Leader of the People?s United Party, Hon. Said Musa, had held meetings with renegade PUP area representatives, Hon. Mark Espat of Albert and Hon. Cordel Hyde of Lake Independence, on at least two occasions. In recent weeks, our sources say, a major party supporter/financier held meetings with a representative of Mark and Cordel, believed to be an older brother of Mark?s.

In retrospect, Mr. Musa?s decision on Tuesday, December 28, 2004, to remove Mark Espat, then Tourism Minister, from his Cabinet, because of what Mr. Musa?s supporters would describe as insubordination in the matter of the Carnival contract, was a gutsy move which could also be considered reckless. Mr. Musa knew he was bringing on new taxes in his budget speech just a couple weeks later; he knew he was not going to honor the contracted pay increases for teachers and public officers; he knew that the Social Security Board irregularities involving Glenn Godfrey?s Intelco, had driven the social partners into alliance with the Opposition UDP; he knew the BTL situation was a complete mess; he knew the people in the media capital of Belize City were very much on edge; he knew the Southside was more explosive than it had been since the Heads of Agreement in 1981.

But he went ahead and fired Mark. The Prime Minister did not expect Housing Minister Cordel Hyde to resign from Cabinet in protest and solidarity with his G-7 colleague. The PUP Leader knew the remnants of the G-7 would strip Mark Espat?s Cabinet corpse to the bone.

Mr. Musa read his estimates of revenues and expenditures for the 2005/2006 financial year on Friday, January 14, 2005, and the following Friday, January 21, at the National Assembly building in Belmopan, an uprising began, featuring UDP elements, an uprising which spread in the next two weeks to include the trade unions in demonstrations and rallies in the old capital and Orange Walk Town. Mr. Musa managed to defuse a planned national trade union march which would have sparked major unrest in the old capital on Friday, February 4, when he gave in on the pay raises for the teachers and the public officers, and made other concessions, such as agreeing to the DFC commission of inquiry. He gave back the University of Belize a half million dollars his budget speech had threatened to slash from UB?s budget.

An uneasy quiet was broken in mid-April when BTL people shut down telecommunications in the nation of Belize. High school, junior college and university students in Belize City blocked the Belcan Bridge on the evening of Wednesday, April 20, in support of the BTL workers, and when night fell, the Southside masses, angry about many things, not the least of which was the exile of Mark and Cordel, exploded in an orgy of rioting and looting.

Again in retrospect, that rioting and looting on the night of April 20 must now be viewed as socio-political orgasm in the nation?s largest population center. It is clear now that April 20, 2005, ended the insurrectionary threat to the Musa administration, because the Opposition UDP began to hold standard bearer and other conventions to prepare for municipal elections scheduled for March of 2006. In addition, the National Trade Union Congress of Belize, the umbrella organization for Belize?s trade unions, had been divided at the leadership level.

Four months away from municipal elections, Belize is back to party politics as usual ? blue and red. Mark Espat and Cordel Hyde never resigned from the PUP, and Mr. Musa never expelled them.

The amazing thing is that the Albert and Lake I committees, under the most severe of political and financial duress, remained loyal to Espat and Hyde for ten months, until they could return to Cabinet with a measure of dignity.