MARK AND CORDEL

that you would be able to give the merits of why we should be voting red!

a fanatical supporter of any political party and therefore will not vote for any donkey,chicken or sheep that a party puts up for political office! Belize needs good governance and to achieve this goal then quality people are needed and if I do not see those quality people running for office then I will call a spade a spade!

Life shouldn't be a journey 2 da grave with D intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways,wornout and screaming - woohoo what a ride!

U sound like a sour UDP fi true!!!!

Damn..I'm so f**king KOOL

u sound like a sour UDP.

then u should throw in your name.

the PUP are masters in marketing and the UDP are definitely very much lacking in that department.

the only person worthy of a vote is Laura Esquivel, think she can run things by herself?

about the UDP-Red as you call them?

One, choice...DA UDP RED MACHINE

call them

Would love to meet them?

who are we going to put in office?

December 29, 2004
Cabinet Reshuffle

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The Cabinet of Belize has again been reshuffled, cutting out three ministers.

The story as covered by channel 7 news:

Tonight, three ranking ministers and members of the G7 are no longer in Prime Minister Said Musa's Cabinet. Mark Espat, Cordel Hyde, and Eamon Courtenay will no longer serve, respectively, as ministers of tourism and culture, housing and foreign trade.
It's a significantly dramatic and consequential development in what has already been a turbulent political year. The decisive move was finalized this evening with a press release: portion of which we will read verbatim: "the Prime Minister has decided to reduce the size of the Cabinet...from 16 members to 12. This is in keeping with government's commitment to good governance and the streamlining of operations..." The release then goes on to list the new portfolio assignments.

The only consequential changes involve those ministries formerly held by the three ministers. First Godfrey Smith will take up the ministry of tourism from Mark Espat, while Francis Fonseca will take up his ministry of culture and Ralph Fonseca while take over the ministry of enterprise, dealing with the free zones. Servulo Baeza will take over Cordel Hyde's Ministry of Housing, while he loses agriculture to Mike Espat. Godfrey Smith will also take over Eamon Courtenay's ministry of foreign trade. And Johnny Briceno takes back the ministry of the environment from Vildo Marin.

There are also changes for ministers of state: first, John Briceno and Joe Coye will no longer serve as ministers of state in the ministry of finance. Also, Ainslie Leslie who was minister of energy and communications will be returned to the backbench as a minister of state in natural resources.

Overall, it's only a smattering of changes involving only half of the Cabinet, but it is the culmination of a compelling political intrigue. Our news director Jules Vasquez has been following the story right through the day and is in studio with us tonight to analyze what went down. Jules, how did we get to this? Three prominent ministers, two of them popular politicians in their divisions, simply rinsed form the Cabinet.

Jules Vasquez,
Well Indira, it started to unfold from Thursday as we mentioned on Friday. It started on Thursday when Eamon Courtenay went into a meeting with the Prime Minister at which time he was told he would be removed from serving in the Cabinet and he would be offered Director General of Trade. The prime minister told him to take the Christmas weekend to think about it and he did think about it. He was the first to go into meet with the prime minister this morning at which point he told the prime minister he would not accept the post as director general in the ministry of trade. Thereafter 3 other ministers, who I understand are Godfrey Smith, Joe Coye, and John Briceno, went into speak with the prime minister and they basically pleaded the case on behalf of Eamon Courtenay. So the prime minister revisited that decision and as we understand it he called Eamon Courtenay back in and told him that 'if you would like to serve, I will make you a Minister again.' At this point Eamon said 'you had no confidence in me on Thursday and so why would I serve now.' And so as we understand it, Mr. Courtenay, former Minister Courtenay refused to reassume the post in the Cabinet after basically being booted on Thursday. And that may have been expected, that was already afoot, so that was not the most consequential development of the day. The most consequential development occurred sometime this afternoon around 2:30 when Minister Mark Espat was called over to the Prime Minister where, in what we understand to be a very brief meeting, he was told that he was being moved from his ministry in the Cabinet and was not offered any other post in the Cabinet; he would be removed from the Cabinet. When that happened, after he went in, Cordel Hyde was called in and he, as we understand it, declined the offer that the prime minister put before him and his people are saying that he did it on principle ground. So after that we are told that the G7 went into a meeting in the minister of foreign affairs' office in the NEMO building across from the prime minister's office. They met there from 3:30 to 4:30 and we don't know what happened at that meeting but we do know that from the results that we saw, the upshot of all it is, that the famous G7 pact, knights of the round table stuff, one for all and all for one, is now dissolved because four of those ministers decided to stay with the prime minister while two refused and one was removed and the 7 refused to stand with each other. So that pact that they had taken in August, if you touch one you touch all, is basically dissolved and the G7 is no more.

What is behind this from your understanding?

Jules Vasquez,
Well I think that Prime Minister Musa, an artful strategist in politics as he always is and he certainly caught everyone off-guard moving at Christmas. There have been rumors for weeks but moving on Eamon Courtenay on two days before Christmas was surprising and certainly all the G7 people had kind of a sweltering Christmas broiling in this. But I think this is a part of the very artful strategy of the prime minister where he went in for the oldest trick in the book: divide and rule. He called in the members of the G7 individually, I would imagine because I was not in the meetings, but offered Godfrey Smith for example who is Minister of Foreign Affairs, which is not a consequential or a significant ministry at this time because its basically a ministry of how to serve the Taiwanese. I am saying Belize's foreign policy is not a big deal and most of the script is already written and if you offer Godfrey Smith foreign trade and tourism, tourism is a very attractive ministry to any politician because it has its own revenue center. It collects taxes which you administer, which the tourism board administers, which do not enter the consolidated fund so for any politician it's a massive boom for their political fortunes. So Godfrey Smith was offered that. Briceno, again we do not know what he was offered, but we do know that he got back environment and he must have gotten an assurance that Vildo Marin will not challenge him for deputy at the national convention on February 20th. So everybody, I believe the strategy was divide and rule and then by that the G7 stood and the Prime Minister effectively alienated those people who were opposed to him and he consolidated his leadership because Godfrey Smith, I would imagine, now should be very grateful to the prime minister for a significant ministerial upgrade. The ministry of tourism as we said is large and so I think that was the strategy employed by the Prime Minister.

You are saying its two Southside ministers being removed. What is behind all this?

Jules Vasquez,
Well I can't imagine what the prime minister's strategy must be when you are moving Mark Espat, as we mentioned on Thursday, who won by the largest margin in the past election, over 80%, and Cordel Hyde won also by a very significant margin, I think over 60%. So you are moving 2 of the most popular of your politicians and I don't think the UDP has any hope of challenging these people seriously. And you are also moving on, Eamon Courtenay and Mark Espat, two people who have greatly endeared themselves to the industries they serve. Mark Espat for long has been a hero for many in the tourism sector although that may have cooled a little with the rift over the Carnival project. And Eamon Courtenay has certainly done great work in the foreign trade realm for the sugar, citrus, and banana industries so the CGA, BGA, and sugar growers certainly appreciate, I gather, the efforts he's put in. So you are looking at people who distinguished themselves to a great deal of competence from one end and on another end you are looking at the only 2 south side ministers the PUP have so as it stands the southside is almost balkanized. We don't know what moves Cordel Hyde and Mark Espat will make but as it stands right now the southside is certainly if not a UDP enclave is certainly not sympathetic to the PUP and so I don't know what Said Musa is thinking but what comes to mind is retribution: 'you all dealt with me in August, well I'll deal with you all now.' But I think, I have to think that it cannot be a short-term policy like that for the prime minister. There must be some wisdom in this that I don't see because obviously the prime minister has to realize and see that when you alienate Mark Espat and Cordel Hyde, who are brothers in law, you incur presumably the wrath of the Kremandala media empire from whom you've pulled the rug from under their feet. And this happens at the same time when the Minister of Education Francis Fonseca, who is loyal to the prime minister, has moved to dissolve the board of UB of which Evan X Hyde is Chairman. So those three developments, clearly the prime minister who has long courted the Hydes, Evan X and Cordel, is now basically saying 'well I don't care, I no longer care to support that relationship.' And if that is happening there is only one thing that can be afoot, Ralph Fonseca who is publicly opposed to Amandala and Krem and certainly the influence Evan Hyde has had on the prime minister and so one feels that Ralph Fonseca's rather significant influence is back on the prime minister.

To go back to your theory of divide and rule, what does this mean for the G7? Where do they stand?

Jules Vasquez,
Well the G7 isn't saying anything; I think that they all speak for themselves. The G7 is sundered, they are divided, the pact is broken, and 4 of them have accepted a compromise with the prime minister and 2 have refused and to one no offer was made so the G7 is no more. But I think that judging from August to now the G7 has completely remapped the political climate in Belize. If we watch the changes that there was this public finance group and also I should mention on the public finance group Mark Espat and Eamon Courtenay were two of the more aggressive members and they will no longer serve on that being that they are no longer ministers. We have the Senate hearings. We have a government completely transformed in its perception of how its financings are. The government is now admitting that we are in a time of austerity and there are all signs of a full-blown crisis which was not present before August and before August the illusion of normalcy was well maintained. I think the G7, while it would be easy to discount them or some of their members as having punked out, I don't think that their contribution can be understated this year in terms of the transformation in perception alone in how we are looking at our finances that we are looking at it as a complete meltdown. I think that is the work of the G7.

What we have also noticed in the changes is that the two ministers of states in finance have also been rinsed. What does that mean given that we are entering the budget process shortly?

Jules Vasquez,
Well I think that is significance that again the influence of Ralph Fonseca, Ralph Fonseca regaining his footing as merro merro and as the jefe is re-emerging because if Said Musa as the minister of finance has gotten rid of the two supposed good angels, Joe Coye and Johnny Briceno, that he had put on his own shoulder to convince the public and to appease to them that the Ministry of finance would be run in a transparent way, he has decided to get rid of them as ministers of state in the ministry of finance. He has also gotten rid of two of the most aggressive members in the public finance committee, which is Eamon Courtenay and Mark Espat, so I think that increasingly the influence of Ralph Fonseca is reestablishing itself in the political life of Said Musa and we are seeing a prime minister who is moving very decisively to reconsolidate his own power in tandem with Ralph Fonseca, I believe. More importantly he does so by reversing, in August his statement said and I have it here that 'these are the people who are going to bring us through this crisis', in Cabinet and in governance at the time and he said this is the group and now only 4 months later to be making a complete reversal on that, to be expunging three of the most prominent members from the Cabinet is a dramatic reversal and its indicative that Said Musa is in high political form but I am not sure that his strategy is long term because how do you eliminate such popular politicians who are basically unchallengeable so that is basically the information Indira. I know it is a lot of information for our viewers but it's a very interesting development in a political off-season which makes it even more so, it shows that the fangs are sharpened even in Christmas.

the last election (and some of their previous ones as well) was won because of an excellent marketing plan. They sold themselves properly for the people to forget about their misdeeds/mishaps and still vote for them. This is what the opposition is lacking in terribly.

LOOK OUT BELIZE for the NEW marketing strategy that will come out. Will you be swayed into changing your vote???