The winner of the Toledo East bye-election on Wednesday, which became necessary after the death of Minister of State/Toledo East representative, the PUP’s Mike Espat, has been announced, and not surprisingly the candidate for the incumbent PUP, Dr. Osmond Martinez, was victorious. The incumbent party has won five of the six bye-elections that have been held over the years, the ruling PUP winning in 1993, 2021, and 2024, and losing in 2003; and the ruling UDP winning two in 2015.
Looking at the three candidates who participated in the race on Wednesday, the extremely confident Martinez had a couple distinct advantages, one being that his party is presently in office, though not more than 15 months remain on the party’s mandate, and his party looks united behind its leader, PM John Briceño. The earnings of Belizeans, which are being battered by inflation, could have been a negative for Martinez, but the results of the bye-election indicate that the people give the government a pass there, maybe because of the global realities. Martinez faced a charge that he was a Honduran national, and his allegation that BDF soldiers had raped women in his village was poorly articulated, sounded like our soldiers had been on a rampage, as if roving bands perpetrated this horrific and shameful crime, with top brass turning a blind eye.
Little is known nationally about the UDP’s candidate, Dennis Williams, outside of him being a stalwart who had done much ground work for the party in Toledo East in a number of elections. The UDP should be on the upswing after being obliterated at the polls in 2020, but Williams was a candidate burdened by a party with leadership issues. The consensus is that the party’s leader, Hon. Shyne Barrow, is leader by default. Both Patrick Faber and John Saldivar, the party’s two ascendant stars going into the 2020 general election, hit the rocks, the former primarily because of improper conduct with women, the latter because the US government damned him as corrupt and he lost his seat in Belmopan; Tracy Panton lost her opportunity to lead because she hesitated when the party called on her to take charge; and failure at the polls blocks the paths of Darrell Bradley and Michael Peyrefitte.
The leader of the People’s National Party (PNP), Wil Maheia, is a successful businessman and environmentalist who is revered countrywide for his defense of Belize’s territorial rights. His dismal showing can be tracked to his running in the wrong election. As recently as 2021, the mayoral candidate for Wil’s party outpolled the UDP’s mayoral candidate in the Punta Gorda Town Council election. But municipal elections are not general (national) elections. Traditionally, third parties get no love in Belize in general elections, and there was no change in the norm on Wednesday.
A general election is due in Belize by November 2025, and, naturally, those interested in the outcome of that election are looking to see what they can draw from the result on Wednesday. The answer to that is that the ruling party remains strong. The bye-election victory was a blowout, the PUP candidate getting about 70% of the votes cast. The next question is when the next general election will be called, if the PUP will call it early.
If the PUP felt certain of victory, and “called it”, it would be a betrayal of a promise in its Plan Belize manifesto 2020-2025. The PUP promised to set “fixed dates for elections”, but after it set up the People’s Constitution Commission, “tasked with conducting a comprehensive review of the Belize Constitution”, a number of reform promises were shelved. The temptation will be great for the PUP to “call it” well before November 2025, particularly because of the disarray in the main opposition. They might, if they don’t mind turning their backs on a promise.
The bye-election of 1993
It could be said that the first bye-election, in January 1993, actually fooled the incumbent PUP. The PUP held the reins of government and they seemed to be well on the way to a victory in the general election that was due by September 1994. The main opposition, the UDP, which had held the reins of government between 1984 and 1989, but lost narrowly in the general election of 1989, ruptured in 1991 over the party’s decision to participate in a bipartisan effort to get the Maritime Areas Bill passed into law. Philip Goldson, who had already earned National Hero status in the hearts of Belizeans, led a breakaway from the UDP that also featured former government ministers Hubert Elrington and Derek Aikman, and Belize Rural North standard bearer Sam Rhaburn.
The UDP leader, former PM Manuel Esquivel, and his deputy, former Foreign Affairs Minister Dean Barrow, went to war against the members who had rebelled against their leadership. Goldson was untouchable; Elrington was also untouchable because of his financial strength, being in the lucrative law business; and Rhaburn was not that consequential in the UDP hierarchy. Esquivel and Barrow turned their ire on Aikman, who happened to be overextended financially because of an investment in an ambitious airline franchise which he felt was essential to our then fledgling tourism industry.
Aikman had, surprisingly, vanquished the Father of the Nation, the PUP’s George Price, at the polls in 1984, and the PUPs were waiting for an opportunity to punish him. With both the UDP and the PUP hankering to extinguish Aikman’s political career, and with a willing Belize Bank, they had him declared a bankrupt.
In January 1993 the PUP’s Jorge Espat crushed the UDP’s Howell Longsworth in a bye-election to fill the Freetown seat Aikman had won by almost a thousand votes in 1989, but was forced to vacate when he was declared insolvent. The PUP called the general election in June 1993, 5 months after the blowout bye-election victory in Freetown, 15 months before the election was due, and lost in a giant upset.
Loose spending; borrowing at commercial rates from a private bank abroad; a desire to carve out a seat for a party favorite, Ralph Fonseca; a UDP promise of free land and free education; a decision by the British that Belize no longer needed to have her troops stationed here; and a hasty return to the fold of the UDP’s breakaway members, minus Aikman; are cited among the explanations for the UDP’s astonishing victory over the PUP. But the PUP held on to Freetown in that election, with Espat handily defeating the UDP’s Owen Morrison.
The bye-election the incumbent lost
The UDP’s John Saldivar won the 2003 bye-election in Cayo South which became necessary when the incumbent, Agripino Cawich, of the ruling PUP, died in June 2003. In the 1998 general election Cawich had destroyed Saldivar at the polls, but in the March 2003 general election the gap between the two had narrowed considerably, Cawich edging past Saldivar by only 24 votes, with 80 votes being spoiled.
The bye-election was held in October that year. In a hotly contested convention, Agripino’s son, Joaquin Cawich, a newcomer to electoral politics, defeated former Cayo South representative, Sam Waight, and the highly credentialed Carlos Santos for the right to represent the PUP. Despite all the contention within the PUP to decide who would represent the party in the bye-election, the party had to feel it would win, the bye-election coming on the heels of the party’s rather decisive general election victory in March.
But the parent Cawich had barely gotten over in the 2003 general election, the PUP’s share of the popular vote had diminished by almost 7% between 1998 and 2003, and there was the rancor that was still simmering in the two PUP camps that felt they were more deserving to lead the ticket than a political neophyte. Still, the odds had to be with the incumbent PUP, which had more than four years left on its mandate. In a mild upset, the seasoned Saldivar defeated Joaquin Cawich, 3,232 votes to 3,122.