A new PUP leader was elected 8 days ago and John Briceno is moving aggressively ahead to consolidate his leadership but critics within his party say he’s gone too far, too fast. The friction is about a hastily called National Convention to be held on Sunday, April 13th in Orange Walk Town at the People’s Stadium.
Briceno’s strategy is to purge all those who supported or represented the status quo but are still holding unto executive seats – with terms extending up to 2009. Those include but are not limited to, Deputy Leader Godfrey Smith, National Campaign Manager Ralph Fonseca and Communications Director Yasser Musa.
The plan is that on Sunday Briceno will offer a brand new slate for a completely new executive, filling all those posts previously held by Musa/Fonseca loyalists. Briceno’s slate will reportedly include Mark Espat, Cordel Hyde, Dan Silva, Eamon Courtenay, Narda Garcia, and Amalia Mai.
The announcement of the very quickly called National Convention went out today and like thunder following lightning, by 5:00 p.m., word came back that it has caused a major rift in the PUP. So much so, that the party’s angry old guard is predicting that candidates, personalities, and constituencies will boycott the convention.
For one, we have been informed by Communications Director Yasser Musa that former Leader Said Musa will not attend and neither will Leader Emeritus George Price. According to his son, the Rt. Hon. Musa has judged that the meeting is out of line with the party’s constitution. Other status quo members with senior posts have told us that it is outrageous and dictatorial hardly – they say – in line with a reform agenda.
And knowing the mood of the current party leadership, we’d guess that they’d be happy to hear that Said Musa, George Price, Godfrey Smith, and Ralph Fonseca won’t be around for their coronation. But there is a deeper issue: the ownership of the party assets, which the old guard presently controls. Assets over which there will now apparently be quite a fight.
Of course, the linchpin in all this is Francis Fonseca: at the leaders’ convention he controlled 310 delegates and the old guard is counting on him to stand with them to undermine Briceno’s convention on Sunday.
Senior old guard sources have told us Fonseca will not be a apart of what they call an illegal convention, while John Briceno today told us, after a morning meeting with Fonseca, that he will, quote, “hold a senior post” on his executive.
Which way will it go? With the PUP in the middle of an identity crisis, it’s hard to tell. What we do know is that with the numbers he currently controls, Briceno’s hold on the leadership is firm, and the only question really is how much he cares that he will be cursed for supposedly breaking from his own reform agenda, and facing the possibility of a mini-boycott. We’ll keep you posted as it unfolds.
