The Opposition PUP is not a democratic party. It is an oligarchy, ruled from the top by a long established syndicate. Until 2004, the PUP essentially managed to run with the hares and chase with the hounds, as it is said. It had become a neoliberal, oligarchical organization, but it retained the reputation of being a roots, populist group, which it had been at its foundation in 1950.
In the PUP’s 1989 to 1993 administration, there were insiders who saw that, while Mr. Price’s awesome status amongst the Belizean people remained intact, the Old Man was beginning to lose his energy and his edge. They ran various projects by him which were in the interests of their own bank accounts, rather than in the interests of the Belizean people, and Mr. Price, titular Minister of Finance, always went along with the program. After all, these PUP heavyweights were committed party loyalists, and as Mr. Price grew older, the party, as opposed to the country, became even more important to him.
The narrow PUP defeat in the 1993 general elections was a strange one. The party won 2000 more popular votes than the UDP, but lost 16 seats to the red while winning just 13. It was a major upset.
The following year, 1994, the PUP lost Town Board elections badly, and there arose a dissenting group inside the party which had issues with the de facto 1989–1993 Minister of Finance, Ralph Fonseca. Fonseca received Mr. Price’s complete support. And Said Musa and Glenn Godfrey also showed themselves to be his committed allies.
Order was restored within the PUP in late 1994, but then in 1996 it was decided that Mr. Price should be replaced as Party Leader. Exactly who it was that decided that, we can’t say, because we don’t know. What we have heard is that the party’s big financiers at the time, Ashcroft and Bowen, supposedly reached the conclusion that the party would have trouble returning to power with Mr. Price at the helm, and therefore needed a younger don.
The 1996 leadership battle between Said Musa and Florencio Marin, Sr., appeared to be a bitter one, but both these men were absolutely loyal to Mr. Price.
Even if Mr. Price himself is not the man he used to be, it is for sure that the extended Price family is the most powerful such group inside the PUP, and probably in the nation of Belize itself.
If countries around us much larger than Belize, such as Guatemala and Salvador, are clearly dominated by specific families, it should be no surprise to us that this has become the case in Belize. The extended Price family controls the largest credit union and the largest fishing cooperative in Belize. They hold leadership in the critical oil, citrus and banana industries. They are well placed in finance and accounting, the military, medicine, law, education, the private sector, and in sports and culture.
The unique thing about the Price extended family is the fact that there has never been and there is not now any visible dissent in their ranks. They are a monolith. Yet, they are not heavy handed. They are, of course, gifted politicians, in the electoral and the social sense.
Between 1998 and 2004, the PUP looted the national treasury of Belize as it had never been looted before. Many general elections won had made the party arrogant, and they appeared, and appear, to believe that their financial sins will blow away “like wah lee breeze.” Badly beaten in election after election since 2006, the PUP believe that it is only a matter of time before the Belizean people have to turn to them once more for “salvation.” Not only that, the PUP do not feel that they have to make any real changes in how they appear to the public. They consider their return to power to be inevitable.
And, perhaps it is. After all, we only have two choices in Belize, and because power corrupts those who possess it, we have to elect the “other” party, whichever it happens to be, to power from time to time. In fact, in general elections from 1984 to 1998, we elected the “other” party every single time.
Each weekday, the media voices of the PUP complain that the independent media are not doing enough to castigate the Dean Barrow administration. While it is true that Barrow’s power grows daily, it is difficult to imagine his family gaining the chokehold on the UDP that the royal family of Belize have on the PUP. More important, there is no Mafia in place within the UDP which can loot the national treasury the way the PUP did between 1998 and 2004. You cannot expect the people of Belize to forget what happened so recently, especially when the same old PUP faces which ripped us off keep appearing on national television in all their excessive prosperity to celebrate victories in the courts.
There were nationally televised hearings of the scandals inside the Social Security Board and the Development Finance Corporation. These images will not soon depart from our memories. If the Price United Party seriously intend to push same old, same old down our throats, then they are disrespecting and underestimating the Belizean people.
All power to the people.