Why is he still PM?

An erstwhile television and radio talk show panelist in Belize City routinely wrapped up his parting shot with the rhetorical question: “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s 9:00 p.m., is Said Musa still the Prime Minister of Belize?” What the panelist meant was: with the avalanche of controversy near burying the party in government how could Said Musa go on being the Prime Minister of Belize? The answer which he never got was simple enough. While that panelist eventually melted away into media oblivion, Said Musa continued being the Prime Minister. He still is today. There is a lesson, somewhere, in this.

Thirty years ago

The party’s withstanding of the serial political crises it faced unceasingly over the last three years is, to a large extent, a reflection of the personal tenacity of its leader, Said Musa; a quality he once, in an unguarded moment, referred to as “staying power.” 

The Amandala newspaper editor Evan Hyde, sometime between the years 1972 and 1975, analyzed Said Musa and Assad Shoman, in a piece styled “Assad and Said” which is published in the selected writings of Evan X Hyde. In examining the conclusions of the thirty-year-old analysis against the men as they are today, some useful observations emerge, especially as they relate to the Prime Minister. Interestingly, the analysis of Said Musa remains largely relevant and insightful thirty years later. Either the writer was particularly penetrating in unearthing one of the most important character traits of Mr. Musa, or the young Said Musa, hardly thirty years old at that time, had already developed and demonstrated an important political character trait that remained constant for over thirty years. It is this trait that explains why regardless of how many times that panelist had repeated his rhetorical question, the answer coming back would have always been “yes.” 

A pure intellectual

The analysis of Assad Shoman, on the other hand, has ceased to be relevant or accurate, if indeed it ever was. While both men are described as intellectuals, the analysis was that: “Assad is a politician first and foremost” and that “were it not for Assad, Said would certainly have removed himself from the maelstrom of politics some time ago”. It is doubtful whether Assad Shoman ever was a politician. Politics was merely the means through which he could pursue his three great fascinations: the independence of Belize, the Belize-Guatemala dispute and the socio-economic ordering of Belizean society. Having been central to the realization of the first of these, the bulk of Mr. Shoman’s public energies were then directed toward the Belize-Guatemala issue. 

But he never really loved or held any fascination for the art and practice of party politics. He no doubt suffered ennui from the monotony of electoral politics. What fascinated him were ideas, concepts and the art and practice of negotiation. He holds distaste, in equal measure, for the practice of politics and the practice of law. Assad Shoman, then, was and is an intellectual first and foremost. He is arguably Belize’s purest intellectual in that, in his intellectual pursuits, he is not distracted by the accumulation of wealth or power for power’s sake and also because his thinking and analysis is not contaminated by personal and emotional considerations. In his inter-personal relationships, even where swords have been vigorously crossed, he harbors no malice. It is never personal. Detractors of Mr. Shoman accuse him of cognitive dissonance. They charge that his worldly tastes clash with his supposed communist sympathies.  Flashpoint’s childhood awareness of Assad Shoman came from his repeated radio disavowals of communism with the words: “I am not a communist.”

A pure politician

Mr. Musa, on the other hand, is arguably Belize’s purest politician. He is a practitioner of Bismarck’s credo that politics is the art of the possible. Mr. Hyde’s analysis of Said Musa, made over thirty years ago, remains instructive to an understanding of the political nature of the man:

“Said has the patient wisdom of a sage, and I sense he will last longer and leave a deeper impression on Belize than Assad. For all his placid exterior, Musa is like a stubborn determined bulldog when he believes he is right. Shoman will preach, but he lacks Musa’s iron will. Assad will connive and conspire, but it is Musa who will persist, when he is certain of himself.”

For a politician, at the tender age of thirty, to be analysed as having “the patient wisdom of a sage”, is very revealing. If that trait in fact existed from then, when it is complemented with thirty years of hard, frontline political experience, what emerges is an extremely formidable political figure whose political instincts and skills it would be foolhardy to underestimate. There is no doubt that the Said Musa of today exhibits patient wisdom. His patience is closely allied with his extraordinary capacity to absorb – to absorb everything: people, crises, shocks, attacks. His patience and his absorptive capacity are mutually self-reinforcing; the latter sustains the former. Together these qualities form his most defining and important political character trait. His tenacity or staying power is merely the outward manifestation of these two qualities. 

He exhibits several other traits which taken together, objectively, constitute the hallmark of political wisdom. He is, for example, a good listener. As one matures in politics it might be pleasantly discovered that the more you listen the less needs to be said. People have an innate need to share their problems and just be heard and reassured. He is slow in judging others. If politics is indeed the art of the possible and does in fact make strange bedfellows it seems to follow that judgment should be held in reserve. He understands that in politics things can change suddenly and that some decisions can be reserved until the last possible moment. He has a strong sense of political mood, timing and perspective in politics. Perspective in politics refers to the ability to gage the proper weight or importance to attach to particular political happenings or events. What might be a loud and tumultuous crisis today, given time, recedes into barely audible static from history’s unfathomable depths. In sum then it is Said Musa’s patience and staying power in the marathon run that is politics that comes closest to answering why he is still prime minister and why he will not so easily be trumped by either an excess of rhetorical prowess or sparkling intellectual brilliance. 

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