We cannot recall any such development inside a ruling political party since 1964. We refer, in the first instance, to Sunday’s mauling of UDP Orange Walk East area representative, Marcel Cardona, by the party favorite, Landy Burns, and by a “third” candidate, Denny Grijalva. In most cases, a third candidate in a constituency convention favors the incumbent, but Cardona had been condemned to execution, and the sentence was carried out on Sunday, December 12. 2010.
In 1964, the PUP Corozal South area representative, Jesus Ken, who had won the constituency with an astounding total of 85 percent in the 1961 general elections, was suddenly confronted by a Copper Bank schoolteacher by the name of Florencio Marin, a native of San Narciso. The trick in it was that Marin had been chosen and was being supported by the national leadership of the ruling PUP, a national leadership dominated at the time by the Hon. George C. Price. They had to hold two conventions to get the job done, but got it done the party did. The incumbent Ken was removed and replaced.
Marcel Cardona’s resistance, in retrospect, now seems like mere collapse. We don’t know a whole lot about Orange Walk politics, but the reports have long been that Cardona was not seeing eye-to-eye with the UDP’s Orange Walk don, Gaspar “Gapi” Vega, Orange Walk North area representative, Minister of Natural Resources and Deputy Prime Minister.
A young attorney, Marcel Cardona had been given a Cabinet posting, Minister of Culture, on the UDP’s accession to power in February of 2008. Last year he was busted down to backbencher after a dispute between himself and the chairman of the National Institute of Culture and History (NICH), Diane Haylock.
Since then, Marcel has been essentially submissive to the will of party leadership. It may be that he was being subversive on the ground in the villages of the Orange Walk District, but we have no knowledge of that. From where he was on the backbench in the House of Representatives, all we could see was that Marcel was toeing the UDP party line.
In retrospect, Cardona would have been better served by going full time roots. The problem was that there was no evidence that Marcel Cardona had a clear-cut philosophy or agenda. By comparison with Gapi Vega, Marcel was definitely populist and roots. In party political terms, however, what did that really mean? For sure, the results of the convention reveal that Marcel Cardona did not do any kind of a job of organizing the villagers in his division and selling a program of militancy. Marcel received 621 votes. The “third” candidate, Denny Grijalva, got 787 votes. And Landy Burns, the Gapi Vega choice, was supported by 1,377 Orange Walk East voters.
This is a devastating defeat for Cardona, and it really does look like the end of his political career. Despite a bad beating in the UDP’s Caribbean Shores constituency convention the Sunday before Orange Walk East’s decision, Roger Espejo, by comparison, is not in as desperate a situation as is Marcel. Espejo was climbing up, and was knocked back. Cardona had reached near the top, and he had the ladder jerked out from beneath him.
The upshot of the Caribbean Shores and Orange Walk East conventions, it seems to us, is that the ruling UDP has indicated rightist tendencies. In real terms in Belize these days, “rightist”means pro-big oil, pro-offshore drilling, and, probably, pro-ICJ. But this is only how it appears to us at this newspaper. Not a word about these important issues – big oil, offshore drilling and the ICJ, came up in any of the campaigning for these two UDP conventions. It would be easy for anyone to argue that our impressions constitute a “reach”. Still, perhaps Marcel would have been better served to raise these issues. It looks like oblivion for him down the road. Life goes on.