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Ending the appointed Senate …

LettersEnding the appointed Senate …

Dear Editor,

Whoever has been championing the elected Senate (an essential part of the republican system) must be careful that their grinning lips don’t split all the way around and join at the back of their heads, for that would be a decapitation. Effectively, the disrespect showed our “parliamentary” Senate by the two Ministers, Martinez and Castro, disrespect that went unchecked, put an end to the appointed Senate in Belize. We should dismantle this thing now, cut the charade and move on.

Pity the knife that turns on itself. Of course, Martinez and Castro will never see the insides of Cabinet again, not via the republican system, the new vehicle they just ushered into town. All hail the new system in Belize! Carla and Godwin should pack their bags and go, before they are ordered to do so.

We all know how the UDP must hurt over this Senate exercise. Oh, they got caught, alright—caught doing something the PUPeez did for years. And those very same PUPeez, there, on the sidelines calling for their heads.

You know this is ingratitude. The Senate hearing into the (mis)management of DFC and SSB funds brought things that were hidden, to the light. Those Senate hearings set the minds of the people on a new beginning. No matter that the then government buried all that had been unearthed, so deep no court could get their hands on it.

What the PUP did with capitalism is unpardonable. If I recall correctly, it was in their 1998 manifesto. But no one believed they would follow through, especially not to the extent they did, because the man at the head had been and presumably remained Assad Shoman’s best friend. Ralph Fonseca and Glenn Godfrey had a field day. They put us back into colonialism, with the old master, and themselves as lords—until the people said nyet, no mas, and turned them out.

Whoa, no one can say that Said Musa is all bad. Yes, he buried the findings of the senate so deep no court could get at it. But he and his party never called the Senate a papishoa.

They (those two) mocked the very system that makes possible their high profile positions in our society. Didn’t anyone tell them that an effective Senate is an essential part of the system we borrowed from the British? Of course it is ignorance, in the Sedi Elrington definition of the term. Humans, all, do err from time to time. We expect our friends and colegas to correct us, not egg us on.

To disrespect the Senate because you are uncomfortable, or feel guilty of something, is improper behaviour for a leader of people. To make attacks on Senators duly chosen by the organizations they represent isn’t HONORABLE. But maybe we are wrong to grouse over this because no one ever said the new Reds in town had the class of Philip Goldson. What we said, and actually believed, is that dehn neva teef.

Oh boy, how the PUPeez must love to hear the UDP mouthpieces zing the Senate hearings. Who can forget when they excoriated Godwin for, of all things, finding a project with a suspected PUP shareholder deserving of SSB consideration. The UDP came within a hair’s breadth of losing the election that followed shortly after that. Time will tell UDP cymbals at BelChina that their proper role for country and party would have been to chektaiz crude Ministers, not praise them. Oh my, here we go again…

Oh my, gone is the 13th Senator, gone before it got a chance to show its worth. Our Belize goes down on the record as the country where the parliamentary system failed without it ever getting a chance. Some say that people get the leaders they deserve. Like heck! We get people who know how to win elections.

It was a waste but, still, praise the BNTU for acting on Jerry Enriquez’s call that they put meaning to the words, teachaz gat yu bak. Of course, the system had to be tweaked. Our “culture” had mangled what we had acquired. The idea of the 13th Senator joining the force to make our Senate more effective, some of us believed that would make our democracy the envy of the world! But it’s all over now, all over for our Senate—it is joke, hoax, and charade.

Hurrah for the proponents of the republican system; you won the day. Unfortunately, your victory will not be good for the people. We’ll get a despotic president and a despotic elected Senate. Thank gudnis nothing is all bad. Then we’ll get that bloody revolution that Rufus X’s grandmother dreamed about.

Just in case you don’t know what bloody revolution means—it means national collapse. Hopefully, by that time we will have gone to the ICJ, and they would have already told the neighbours to the west that this land isn’t theirs. For we’ll be so weak after the fighting, they could just walk in and take us over.

Colin Hyde

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