"The Office of the Prime Minister announces that, with immediate effect, the Hon. Elvin Penner is no longer a Minister of State in the current Administration. The Prime Minister formed the view that, with respect to a situation brought to his attention on Tuesday, Hon. Penner, as Minister of State in the Immigration Ministry, did not discharge his responsibilities with either the due judgment and balance, or the scrupulous regard for appearances, which the Prime Minister demands of all his Ministers. As a consequence the Prime Minister late yesterday evening met with Hon. Penner and required him to resign. After discussion Hon. Penner agreed with the position of the Prime Minister. He therefore tendered and….his immediate resignation (was accepted)."

"In a related development, the Office of the Prime Minister also announces that the Immigration Ministry, together with the Ministry of the Public Service, has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the issue of a Belize passport to a South Korean national. The Immigration Ministry will make a statement in the next day or so as to the results of that investigation." Today Prime Minister Barrow declined an interview, saying only by text, quote, "I dealt immediately with the minister as per my responsibility. The Immigration Ministry investigation clearly involves Public Officers, and has its own procedure. I will say nothing more at this stage so as not to prejudice that ongoing process." End quote.

As we understand it there is an intensive internal investigation underway at the Immigration Department - which, our sources say, is focusing on the passport section. But no attention is being paid to the Nationality section where no file can be found for this South Korean and neither can any nationality certificate can be found. Yet the passport section received his application. And while that continues to unravel, the timeline suggests the Prime Minister acted quickly - learning on Wednesday and meeting with Penner yesterday afternoon at 4:00 at his Belize City office where the second term minister of state was forced to resign from Cabinet.

Penner also declined comment today. We also reached him by text message and he told us, quote, "I have been elected by the people to serve them under the UDP and I will continue to serve my area to the best of my ability."

And, politically, that's where the focus now lies. While the scandal of a backdated passport reportedly issued to a detained person will unfold under its own momentum, the political aspect bears some very close watching.

Penner remains as the standard bearer for Cayo Northeast - he has not resigned that post. But, it's a seat that he won by only 17 votes in the 2012 election, the closest of any contest. And now that he will be a sort of lame duck representative, there is a thing called the recall mechanism - where 30% of the registered voters in the constituency, in this case, about 1,600 voters can sign a petition triggering a bye-election. There's no indication from the PUP that this will happen - and the leader of the opposition didn't return our calls - but, looking at the objective circumstances, the timing certainly favours it. We say that because the recall can only be triggered after the representative completes 18 months in office - and Penner is now in his 19th month.

But, right now, that is pure speculation; for Penner the immediate task is to use the Edmund Castro model. In the last term of the Barrow Administration, he too was stripped based on conduct un-becoming, yet he managed to be re-elected by a comfortable margin in the next election. But we note that his margin of victory in the prior election was not 17 votes, as it is for Penner.