After the painful defeat the “No to the ICJ” crowd suffered in the Referendum (Sedi Elrington’s greatest moment), the General Secretary of the VIP, Brother Paul Morgan, still smarting over what he considers a betrayal of our country, turned his attention back to redistricting (a requirement of the constitution I get the sense his party’s leaders feel must be respected before they contest elections in Belize again).

If you notice, the VIP has not been contesting elections of recent. They have probably realized what UBAD found out in one election — that the dice in Belize is loaded for red and blue.

Brother Jerry Enriquez made a call for redistricting (not the gerrymandering our politicians like) several years ago, but I didn’t “vote” for it. My position was that too many people in our country weren’t yet “Belizean enough” to participate in the process, and that the distribution of voters across constituencies at the time, though contrary to the constitution, actually neutralized this fault.

The old law, which is the existing law, says, at 26(1), that the following persons may, upon making application at any time after Independence Day, be registered as citizens of Belize: (a) any person who is married to a citizen of Belize; (b) any person who has been resident continuously in Belize for a period of five years immediately before the date of his application; and (c) any person who makes a substantial contribution to the economy and/or well-being of Belize or who has rendered distinguished service to Belize.

If you are 18 years old and a citizen of Belize or you are from a Commonwealth country and have resided in Belize for not less than 12 months, you can vote in Belize.

I don’t know how many economic citizens live in Belize and have participated in general elections, but refugees from the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador came to Belize in the thousands, and a number of them exercised the franchise.

It was great of Belize to open her doors, but it wasn’t right that the law for the “right to vote” wasn’t changed when so many people came to our country as refugees and economic citizens. Both the red and blue have used the vote of the new Belizeans to skew the elections when they are in power.

In the first instance, it is natural that the refugees felt “beholden” to the party which was in power when we opened our doors. In the second instance, most refugees came with only the clothes on their back, so they were extremely vulnerable — easy game for unscrupulous political leaders, which we have in abundance in Belize, to manipulate.

Many times the PUPeez have reminded us that they won the popular vote in 1993, but the UDP formed the government. No research has been done to find out if this majority they won, if it consisted mainly of manipulated new voters.

I believe I explained that I didn’t “vote” for Jerry’s position because the divisions that were heavy with voters had many new Belizeans, and they were being used by unscrupulous politicians to get over.

The website, countrystudies.us says, “the number of Salvadoran refugees living in Belize was estimated at between 2,000 and 15,000 in the late 1980s, and recent studies claim that between 25,000 and 31,000 citizens of neighboring republics had entered the country since 1977.”

I think that citizenship should have been given to immigrants after the prescribed period, but because their number (including Guatemalans and Hondurans) was so large, and was such a huge percentage of our small population, they should have been made to wait fifteen or twenty years before they could vote in a general election.

In 2020, those immigrants who came in the last century are now full-fledged Belizeans. I don’t know if the court will rule that redistricting be done, and if so, whether this would take place before the next general election or immediately after, but if my vote mattered, I support Jerry, and Paul, Bobby, and Patrick of the Belize Peace Movement.

Ms. Aria didn’t say

There was a blind spot of about a minute during Ms. Aria Lightfoot’s chat on Friday with WuB host, Brother Nuri Muhammad, so it’s not impossible that she didn’t ignore a certain matter in her discussion about the selection of Mrs. Kamala Harris, a black woman, as running mate on the Democratic ticket in the USA.

I don’t have the discussion down sequentially, and while my report is substantially correct, I can’t guarantee 100% accuracy. Ms. Aria said that Kamala was not far left, meaning I guess that she is not a close ally of some notable Democrat congresswomen.

Kamala has an Indian (from India) mother and a Jamaican father, both of whom became accomplished academics living the American dream. The Indians (from India) are a very powerful economic group in the US, and I think Ms. Aria said that Kamala will make inroads there for her party.

I don’t recall any discussion about the Jamaican dad, and maybe he doesn’t help any. I read somewhere that Kamala isn’t black enough, and there’s a lot of intrigue in such a statement. We can bet that didn’t come from Jamaicans in the US; no, I don’t think so. If we go back we can recall that famous American Black leaders didn’t care for Marcus. But let’s leave that alone.

Ms. Aria said that Mr. Joe Biden, an oldster running as the headman on the Democratic ticket, has not necessarily cornered the black vote in that country. Ah, there was a time when the Democrats were the racists, but it is so now that they are forwarded as the champions of black people in the US.

Ms. Aria feels that Kamala will win votes from those allied with Black Lives Matter (BLM), a large group in the US that won a lot of points for stepping up against white cops who insist on being savage to black people. I expected that what would follow in Ms. Aria’s remarks was mention of the fact that Kamala was a flaming Gay supporter, but maybe Ms. Aria didn’t throw that in because Biden has that vote all sewed up, or maybe she mentioned it and I missed it because of WuB being off air for a period.

The reason I expected Ms. Aria to mention the gays on the heels of her reference to BLM is because that group (Democrats/Liberals) is led by the various letters of the alphabet.

For me, Ms. Aria is always a welcome voice when she calls the WuB to talk to Nuri because she is so, so knowledgeable about so, so many things, both here and in the US, and I think we have to be grateful to people who bring enlightenment to our lives. So, she gets a pass for passing over Kamala’s flaming support for Gays, which is a beautiful fit with that certain group over there, and such a concern for so many of us over here.

These Democrats in the US curse Republicans because they prefer Trump, a man with very suspect conduct with suspect women, over the squeaky clean Obama, but they never, ever throw in that Trump does not support abortion and he allows the Evangelical Republicans to stomp on excessive gay rights, particularly the ultra-strange creature called gay marriage.

If you pay attention to the US political landscape, you almost never hear about gay issues and the vote; it’s like they are ashamed to make the world know that in the land where they have the biggest bomb and the most money, and Hollywood movies and sports icons that dominate our little lives, Leviticus matters.

We over here, we definitely should ride Democrat. The Republicans want to cramp or crash Social Security, and that is a big concern for Belizeans in America, so we have to say, Go Democrats. But there is just too much gay progress with the Democrats.

Keeping it in Belize, the best I can come up with on that certain matter is a compromise – gay ships and gay planes could get a corridor to their wedding destination at Gold Star resorts, so the money- making can go on, and our precious Leviticus crowd will be spared the spectacle.