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Last night we told you that Mayor Zenaida Moya is suing the UDP and she's doing so with two attorneys affiliated with two PUP – affiliated attorneys, Dr. Elson Kaseke and Godfrey Smith. As we told you the move was sure to result in an escalation of public hostilities between the UDP and Mayor Moya.

Well it has and the UDP is the first to strike and the directive is clearly to politically terminate the Mayor, with extreme prejudice. The party sent out a release this evening accusing the Mayor for, "having illegally paid herself vacation grants of nineteen thousand dollars." And it's not idle talk or wild accusations. The claim comes out of a new audit query which accuses the Mayor of many over-payments including the vacation grant.

The audit which is dated October 6th has been obtained by 7News and is labelled "overpayment of salary – Zenaida Moya, Mayor, Belize City Council." It claims that from March of 2006 to December of 2008 – by council resolution, the Mayor should have been paid a total of $204,000 but instead she received $69,000 more, bringing her total received to $273,000. And included in that is the $19,000 in vacation grant when no such grant was approved – according to the auditors.

It's a new wrinkle on an old story that first emerged a year ago when the Mayor was being challenged in a convention. And while that time the information was being "leaked", this time it is pouring out from the main source, party headquarters with the official account from the Auditor General's office.

The release says that Moya's lawsuit is just an attempt to, "prevent the party from holding her to account" and "only heightens the party's feeling that she is consistently engaged in behavior that violates the party's commitment to transparency." But will she be able to block it? The UDP's National Party Council meets this weekend to appoint an Ethics Committee. From there, things are expected to proceed apace to expel the mayor from the UDP.

The question now is, will Moya's attorneys be in time to stop it? Well, they have gotten a court date of October 30th or a Supreme Court hearing before Justice Minette Hafiz at which they will request an urgent injunction to stop the proceedings against the Mayor. By then, much more political bloodshed is expected. But for the time being, today's broadside is remarkable enough: a political party – in an official release - accusing one of its elected officials of wrongdoing...unprecedented.