Dear Editor,

I don’t attempt to solve any of the country’s problems with this one letter to Amandala, for which, by the way, I have much respect on account of its numerous hard-hitting commentaries, editorials and synopses of political goings-on in our little neck of the woods. Nor do I aspire to become some sort of modern-day freedom fighter/blogger who thrives to “save his country before he loses it” through overt media-based attacks that subvert the powers that be.

Not me, rather I simply love reading the news, it’s my literary staple. In fact, apart from textbooks, it’s the only thing I actually read, which must fly in the face of every high school literature teacher who tells her students the only way to be successful in this world is to become worldly by reading lengthy novels. The printed mass media, in my opinion, is far more educational and oftentimes entertaining in its own right than bound material thicker than a centimeter. Local early morning call-in shows also typically reflect the same content covered in the printed press, albeit to varying degrees of self-righteous know-it-all-ism. At the tip of the spear, however, and without any brown-nosing on my part, is the WUB, hands down.

On camera, the son of your Publisher is an intelligent and moral man, though I can’t speak to his character off camera. Nonetheless, I only wish he would contact his “journalist” counterparts on Coney Drive and let them know that endangering the well-being of two innocent young witnesses to their father’s murder, while simultaneously prejudicing the outcome of a future criminal hearing, would warrant their immediate termination without benefits if this were a country in the industrialized world. But it’s not, and what a fool am I to expect anything better, when the main competitor for the monopoly on the 6:30 broadcast is quick to hypothesize that murders in the old capital are now being driven by a deepening divide between ethnic groups. Reporting the news means only reporting the facts, not your opinions!

While racial tension has rooted itself in the power skirmish within the upper echelons of the ruling party (I must admit the “failed-state” Opposition has done very well in hiding theirs), I am skeptical that skin color has been high on the list of reasons why young men in the city go out on the streets and kill. Perhaps the shining light of the Police Department, the new Deputy Commissioner with a graduate degree, would also disagree with Mr. Vasquez’s hasty accusations.

And while I’m no huge fan of our men in brown and blue, since I’m on the topic of Commissioners, I must acknowledge the tremendous improvements made in the bus routes between the old and new capitals by a certain former ComPol. He hasn’t publicly claimed credit for it, but he deserves a nod for his hard work and no-nonsense approach dealing with owners, drivers, station managers, commuters and the like. Let’s hope he is not brought out of retirement for his expertise in crowd-control at Tuesday’s demonstration. We all remember how that worked out for civilians (and some unfortunate “journalists”) almost eight years ago.

But what am I discussing again? Oh yes, I guess the only real reason I wrote this letter and sent it out for the devoted Amandala readers, who like me read everything on every page in hopes of finding evidence for intellectual life that may still reside at 17 degrees North, 89 degrees West, and apart from
spending Sunday night immobilized in my sofa with a particularly annoying strain of what may very well be H3N2 from up north, was to give a witty shout out to my fellow Belizeans – I hope your weekend was as restful as mine, we will be needing all the strength we can muster to survive another week in (McAfee’s former) paradise. Bless up!

Name withheld