On Friday afternoon, March 18, PUP area representatives Mark Espat (Albert) and Cordel Hyde (Lake Independence) spoke out fiercely against two taxation bills being processed by their party leader and other PUP area representatives ? the excise tax bill on beer and the environmental tax bill. Because the Leader of the UDP Opposition, Hon. Dean Barrow, called for a vote by so-called ?division?, both Espat and Hyde had to record their individual votes. They both voted against the bills they had condemned, so that they again, as they had on January 21, voted against important taxation packages proposed by the party on whose platform they had been elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2003. (For the record, Espat and Hyde voted with the ruling PUP on February 21, 2005, where the matters of the US$216 million bonds were concerned.)

If you look at public matters from the personal standpoint, you would perhaps focus on the fact that Espat and Hyde are brothers-in-law. But if you consider public matters from the political standpoint, the important consideration is that Espat and Hyde are the only two PUP area representatives (out of six) on the embattled Southside of Belize City. In addition, since December 28, 2004, the two PUP Southside area representatives have seen more than 50 of their constituents fired from the Ministries of Tourism and Housing, portfolios which Mark and Cordel held, respectively, before December 28.

Depending on whose side you are on, you will blame either PUP Leader Said Musa/his ruling faction or Mark Espat/Cordel Hyde for the fact that a crack in the PUP government which opened on August 12, 2004, became a gaping chasm on March 18, 2005. The fact that the PUP Leader?s most precious party financier, Barry Bowen, was the issue in the controversial excise tax on beer bill, and because the PUP House members were solidly behind Bowen except for the two Southside mavericks, the political situation inside the PUP changed dramatically last Friday afternoon, and the implications for Kremandala are huge.

It is important for you, the people, to appreciate the fact that Mark Espat and Cordel Hyde are grown men and experienced politicians. They do not accept instructions from myself. If it pleases them, they ask my advice. But it is they who have been elected in two different general elections by thousands and thousands of registered adult voters. Do not blame Kremandala for anything that Mark and Cordel say or do. By the same token, do not expect Kremandala to do otherwise than to support them.

The issue of Jorge Espat is one that appeared to have gone away. When Jorge Espat openly criticized the PUP while he was PUP chairman and Freetown area representative/Minister of National Security in August of 2001, Mark Espat, who was Albert area representative/Minister of Tourism, made no public comment. When Jorge Espat proceeded to resign from Cabinet on principle, relinquished his party chairman?s post (replaced by Vildo Marin), and went on to decline to run in the general elections of 2003 (replaced in Freetown by Francis Fonseca), Mark Espat made no public comment, and carried on his Albert constituency and Ministry of Tourism political business as per usual.

Three years later, Mark Espat began his own public crusade. The issue for Jorge in 2001, as it was for Mark in 2004, was fundamentally the same ? the public finances of Belize. The difference was three years in time.

The matter of public finances is now the most important political issue in Belize today, except perhaps for the Guatemalan claim to Belize.

This newspaper has been the only major institution, we think, which has broken with Belizean governments we helped to elect, broken with them years before their terms of office were completed. There has been no Belize Cabinet Minister as high ranking as Jorge Espat who has ever walked away as he did. The sagas of Mark Espat and Cordel Hyde, it does now appear, will be stories which will make history in Belizean politics. Mark this date down ? Friday, March 18, 2005.