The five murders over the Christmas holidays are telling us that the traditional message of Yuletide peace and goodwill was not really reaching Belizeans at the base of the pyramid. The days leading up to Christmas were tense; many Belizeans were realizing that the Pascua would be an uncharacteristically rough ride. And if the Christmas was dread, what was there to look forward to in January?
It may not seem that way to some people, but we don’t believe we are as categorical editorially at this newspaper as we have been in years past. One reason for this is that over the years we have seen many of the things we warned against, inveighed against even, get eagerly gobbled up by our people. And we have seen many of the things we proposed, championed even, get trampled upon by people of influence in our society. Rejection tends to make one become sober, if not actually discouraged. Still, sometimes some things take time.
In a parliamentary democracy like ours, “majority” is a magic word. It may actually be a magic potion. “Majority” can make bad things good and it can make foolishness become sense. The question we should ask ourselves from time to time is this: how is that sacred majority actually achieved?
When the colonial British government granted universal adult suffrage to British Honduras in 1954, they did not intend for that voting franchise to liberate the Belizean people. The British had been working parliamentary democracy for centuries, and in fact they may have invented the sucker. Looking back, we can see that the British and their institutional collaborators in Belize knew that universal adult suffrage, while infusing the masses of the people with hope and inspiration, could be controlled from above where the decision-making process was concerned. Remember now, the British retained absolute control of the security forces and the judiciary in 1954.
Perhaps even more ominous in its long term implications, in 1954 the British and their institutional collaborators controlled the educational system and they dominated the churches, all of which were Christian in 1954. So that, the British and their institutional collaborators controlled our minds. In effect, they told us for whom to vote – who was acceptable and who was not. Theoretically, electoral decisions were made by the majority of voters on election day, but these voters had all been taught in Christian schools and they were very much God-fearing.
The British began to allow native Belizeans to become heads of department in the civil service in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But they held on to the post of Commissioner of Police until 1969, when Arthur Adolphus became the first Belizean ComPol. The military remained all British, and the Supreme Court was as British as could be. Regina ruled.
When Belize finally achieved political independence in 1981, we had a Belizean army, but it was still commanded by a British expatriate. The judges are all, in real terms, British-trained. To become a Caribbean lawyer in the first instance, please understand, it is as if you must go through a process of becoming British in your thinking. If you don’t believe that, then it means you are looking but you do not see.
There are many countries in Central America and the Caribbean which have problems as bad as ours in Belize, and worse. It is possible that some of these countries may have experienced a Christmas murder spree as bad as, or worse than, ours, proportionally speaking. We don’t know and we can’t say. What we can say is that even armies fighting shooting wars, have declared Christmas truces before. In Belize, however, things became worse at Christmas.
We believe we have shown you in this essay that our “freedom” has been conditional and it has been controlled. Worse than that, it is flawed. The most serious flaw of all is the fact that we cannot discipline our own people. If Belize had remained a British colony, discipline would not have been a problem. So, if you think about it Brook Benton-style, we got what we wanted – political independence, and we lost what we had – law and order. These developments took place while we were practicing parliamentary democracy, which is to say, the rule of the majority of adults voting on election day.
Our thesis is that the minds of the majority of Belizean adults voting on election day are programmed by schools and churches which are not indigenous in origin, curriculum or philosophy. Yes, Belize is independent, but the 2010 Christmas holidays present a compelling argument that we have regressed to a condition similar to that of the settlement of Belize in 1768. In December of that year, an Admiral Parry in Jamaica writing to Secretary Stephen in London, described the inhabitants of Belize as “a most notorious lawless set of miscreants.” Parry referred to the “murders, frauds, and confusion which are notoriously practiced amongst the Baymen.” In 2010, it does appear, certain things have not changed that much.