Most politicians are considerably interested in power and money, but most of them spend much time explaining to the people how altruistic their motives are, how much they love the people, and how much they want to serve.
The political phenomenon that was the Rt. Hon. George Price emerged on the scene in British Honduras as spectacularly as it did, in good part because the manifest personal austerity of the man. He wore plain clothes and lived alone in an old, wooden house which was unpainted for decades. There was charisma in the man, but no ostentation. He was a spiritual man, not a materialistic one. Indeed, he lived his life like the humble priest he had originally intended to become.
A personality cult began to grow around Mr. Price in the middle 1970’s, and by the time he led Belize to political independence in 1981, Mr. Price was a living legend walking on Belizean earth.
A second generation of PUP personalities who reached adulthood in the 1970’s, however, were, with respect to their appetites, the opposite of Mr. Price. They were massively hedonistic and they craved money openly. They also had what the Creole people call “face of brass.” They were in politics for self-aggrandizement, simply put, and as time went on it became clear that they had absolutely no scruples or morals. They believed in “by any means necessary.”
For the PUP faithful, it took a long time for the truth to hit home where the second generation PUP personalities were concerned, one reason being that the PUP lost power in 1984, and the second reason being that when the PUP returned to power in 1989, Mr. Price still held the title of Maximum PUP Leader.
As the PUP’s 1989 to 1993 term unfolded, the word slowly began to circulate in Belmopan, the new capital and seat of the nation’s administrative power, and then it spread east to Belize City, Belize’s old capital, and population, media and financial center. Mr. Price was now Maximum Leader in name only. Real power, which is to say, the control of public funds, had been transferred to a personal favorite of Mr. Price’s, he who would become the highest profile of the second generation PUP personalities.
The results of the 1993 general elections, which were called an incredible fifteen months early in an attempt by the aforementioned favorite to legitimize and consolidate his real power (de facto) with parliamentary credentials (de jure), are the strangest in Belizean political history. The PUP won the popular vote. Countrywide, 2,000 more Belizeans voted for the PUP than voted for the UDP, but the UDP won three more seats than the PUP, and formed government with a 16-13 seat margin in the House of Representatives.
Those brazen elements in the PUP to whom we earlier referred in this essay, then went so far as to conspire to buy the loyalties of two UDP area representatives – Salvador Fernandez of Cayo North and Chiste Garcia (deceased) of Dangriga. A switch in loyalty by the two would have given Mr. Price’s PUP a 15-14 margin in the House. The new UDP Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Manuel Esquivel, got wind of the plot, and foiled it. The details of the matter have been swept under the rug. How did Esquivel find out? Who was offering the money, and how much? How much talking did Salva and Chiste do? The story has never been told. PUDP all the way!
In retrospect, Kremandala should have been more hesitant about lending its credibility to a PUP which was spinning out of control philosophically and abandoning its social justice foundation. We should have known better, but we still believed in Hon. Said Musa, and we had a serious vendetta going with the UDP leadership.
The PUP returned to power in August of 1998 under the leadership of Said Musa. Soon, the second generation PUP personalities showed their claws and bared their fangs. Their behavior with public funds became scandalous. Belize’s national debt was tripled in just a few years. The projects on which the money was supposedly spent did not show value for that money. Some Cabinet Ministers demanded an accounting in August of 2004. The people marched in Belize City. The Opposition UDP surged in Belmopan in January of 2005. And early the following month, Assad Shoman, condemned as a communist in the 1970’s and exiled in the 1980’s, flew into Belize to save the Musa government from Belize’s enraged trade unions.
Since 2006, electoral defeat after electoral defeat has been inflicted on the PUP. The people of Belize had finally gotten the sense. The post-independence PUP had very little to do with George Price classic. It only used his name, and the old man was playing favorites.
As the PUP prepares for a critical national convention on October 17 in Dangriga, the aforementioned second generation of PUP personalities are on an all-out campaign to re-establish control of the party. With the blessing of Mr. Price, their chances of accomplishing same cannot be discounted. The thing is, what works inside the PUP is not necessarily going to work out here any more. We admire the PUP second generation’s face of brass, but the people of Belize have been once bitten, twice bitten, thrice bitten … The 2010 PUP is not about George Price or social justice. The face of brass guys have proven that for all of us to see.
We rest our case.