Both sides came together today in a mid afternoon meeting at the party leader John Briceno 's office - which is not at Independence Hall - but at what's known as the Happy Tails building on Eve Street in Belize City.

A group of 5 parliamentarians went into the meeting with Briceno just after three. Those 5 are Deputy Leaders Mark Espat, Cordel Hyde and Francis Fonseca along with Past Leader Said Musa and Florencio Marin Jr. They were joined by the party chairman, Carolyn Trench-Sandiford.

They reportedly went to demand that Briceno cancel a National Party Council meeting on Saturday, which would lead to a National Convention on September 26th. The meeting was surprisingly brief; it lasted just less than half an hour and the parliamentarians left without comment.

Now what did they discuss and what was decided? Well, finding that out is like tracking a moving target.

Briceno's Chief of Staff, Stuart Leslie says the actual meeting only lasted 15 minutes. He says the parliamentarians plus the chairman expressed concern about rumours of a September 26th. convention. Leslie says they appealed to Briceno to follow the rules of the constitution, which would prevent such a snap convention. Leslie says Briceno responded that he announced no date for a national convention and he has every intention of following of the rules of constitution as regards setting the date of that convention.

Leslie confirmed that the party still does intend to have a National Party Council Meeting this Saturday. National Party Council meetings are usually held in advance of National Conventions.

And while that is one version of this afternoon's meeting - in the fractious and factional PUP, there are always multiple accounts of every event.

And one of those versions says that rather than express concern, the parliamentarians explicitly and individually warned Briceno to cease and desist from his plan the course of action. By their account, Briceno was non-committal, saying that he will leave it to the national party council to decide on Saturday.

With that, it has been communicated to us that the collective sentiment of this quite unlikely band of 5 parliamentarians believe that if he persist it will bring into question his ability to continue to enjoy their support as leader of the opposition.

The Band of Five has reportedly met with 11 constituencies to solidify their position.

But 11 is not nearly half of 31 and so the bottom line tonight remains that whether he was directly warned or subtly appealed to, Briceno continues to dictate the terms of engagement and - by all outward observations - those who oppose him have been caught off guard and are scrambling to recover and gather critical mass.

And while Briceno controls the pace - the implicit threat of the five parliamentarians - assuming they are as united as today's showing makes it seem - is that they could overthrow him as leader of the opposition in the house. With the present opposition bench having only six members, at the parliamentary level any aspiring leader only needs 3 other parliamentarians to support him as leader to get enough votes to ask the Governor General to name a new leader of the opposition in the house.

But we're a long way from there; observers agree that the possibility of that happening remains remote, but remains nonetheless remains as an implicit and live threat.