“When Yeltsin faced reelection in 1996 in Russia, he was still so unpopular and his defeat looked so certain that his advisers toyed with canceling the vote altogether … In the end, the election went ahead and Yeltsin won, thanks to an estimated $100 million in financing from oligarchs (thirty-three times the legal amount) as well as eight hundred times more coverage on oligarch-controlled TV stations than his rivals.”
– pg. 232, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, by Naomi Klein, Metropolitan Books, 2007.
The way Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism (unfettered capitalism) is supposed to work for the politicians who facilitate the transfer of public assets to party cronies and oligarchs, is for those so favored and enriched to pour so much money into the relevant political party at general election time that the party is unbeatable.
In the case of the PUP crony and oligarch, Glenn Godfrey, reliable sources have told this newspaper that Godfrey’s self-protective slide over to the UDP is now so far advanced that Mr. Godfrey has become a large campaign financier for the Opposition.
Godfrey, the former chairman of the Development Finance Corporation, was considered the prime suspect in the Social Security Board (SSB) financial scandals which provoked the Senate Select Committee investigations of 2005. When the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) commission of inquiry followed, Glenn Godfrey had to be seen as the man in the eye of the DFC storm. He had chaired the DFC when it experienced an incredible and unregulated meltdown. Glenn Godfrey was a “star” witness in both public hearings.
It is reasonable to say that Glenn Godfrey was expected to be a target of post-election investigations if the UDP won the general elections. Mr. Godfrey, however, has apparently put himself in a position to make a soft landing under the UDP. This is an example of an election conditionality. To win a general election, political leaders require money, and lots of it. There are no laws having anything to say about campaign financing in Belize. It is a free for all. PUP and UDP politicians accept money indiscriminately. With his gifts to the UDP, Mr. Godfrey would essentially have become a part of the UDP, a condition which will provide him with protection under a UDP administration.
The irony of the present situation is that the PUP leadership did a lot to enable Mr. Godfrey to make his multiple millions, and, when hell began to break loose in July of 2004, the PUP leadership refused to make Godfrey a target or a scapegoat. Glenn Godfrey was a PUP sacred cow, and when he sensed the possibility of a change in his PUP sacred cow status, he began his slide over to the red. This is a process which began a couple years ago. In his appearances on Channel 5 with Rosalie Staines and on Channel 7’s LIK ROAD with Michael Finnegan and Michael Peyrefitte, Godfrey began the process of making the PUP leadership become the scapegoat. His defence was to go on the attack, and the PUP administration ended up, for all intents and purposes, absorbing the Godfrey blame, politically speaking.
There are some who say that the reason for this is that the PUP leaders were in bed with Godfrey from 1998 to 2004, and they are afraid he may “talk their business.” Whatever is the case, the present situation is a classic example of the Smokey Joe dictum – money talks and bulls—t walks.
The grassroots rank-and-file who support the two major political parties have a different agenda from the oligarchs who finance the same two parties. Because of the financial requirements of the general election campaign, the political leaders have to provide guarantees to big financial donors. These are the election conditionalities which explain why elected parties behave differently in office from the campaign expectations of their rank-and-file. Theoretically, democracy is one man, one vote. In reality, big money buys many votes, directly and indirectly, and the result is the compromising, the poisoning of the democracy.
Sooner or later, a newspaper which has the welfare of the Belizean people as its chief concern, will always end up in conflict with elected governments here. The reason is the “behind closed doors” conditionalities which are a continuing part of the real political world.
The PUP Leader has gone on public record as blaming the media for the corruption charges against his administration. All those years when he was looking Glenn Godfrey in the face across boardroom tables, did it ever occur to him whom and what he was looking at? Glenn himself is now blaming the PUP, and the PUP is blaming the media. It would be funny, were it not for those closed doors conditionalities. Those are serious business. For real.