Elections upset in Belize
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See the article in its original context from July 1993.
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Provisional results up early Thursday gave the UDP 15 of the 29 parliamentary seats, with 13 going to the PUP. A recount was underway in the final constituency where the first count had given victory to the UDP. In the old 28-seat parliament, the PUP had held 17 seats, to the UDP's 11 seats. UDP leader Manuel Esquivel, who served as prime minister during the party's first term in government from 1984-1989, thanked Belizeans in a brief statement over Radio Belize for electing the UDP.
Outgoing Prime Minister Price, who called the election one year before the government's mandate was due to expire, was not immediately available for comment.
Analysts here had accurately predicted the narrowness of the outcome after a campaign dominated by opposition charges of corruption. against the government.
The poll was a gamble Price took. After the PUP won a by-election last January and a landslide in April local government elections, Price apparently miscalculated the opposition's strength which got a boost during the campaign when former dissidents who had broken away and formed a splinter group, rejoined the camp.
During the campaign, Esquivel, 53, proposed free education from primary school to university level, income tax concessions and suspension of a Cont'd on page 2 from page 1 Maritime Areas Act granting Guatemala access to the Atlantic Ocean through Belizean territory.
Esquivel's party accused the government of economic mismanagement, illegally giving several hundred Guatemalan and Honduran immigrants Belizean citizenship and voting rights in a bid to win the poll, and of making too great concessions to neighbouring Guatemala, which has had a longstanding territorial claim to Belize.
Price, seeking his third mandate since taking Belize to independence from Britain in 1981, rejected charges of government corruption as baseless. Both Price and UDP leader Manuel Esquivel won their seats.
Price, 74, defeated lawyer Wilfred Elrington by 740 votes to 659 in his Pickstock (Belize City) constituency. Esquivel took the Caribbean Shores seat, with a narrow win over accountant Jose Coye who picked up 1,275 votes to Esquivel's 1,315.
