by Colin Hyde

In his piece on Friday, amidst some praise of government for doing some right things, Glen said “the 6-million-dollar land deal in Belmopan still stinks to high heaven …” BelAms Ms. Aria and Mr. Mario, Mr. Mario to a lesser degree, produced a paper calling for a thorough investigation into the “corrupt” land deal. At home we saw our union leaders and some activists get in the government’s face on the matter. I will ask Brother Jerry Enriquez to please tell the BNTU to practice their battle song or not sing it. You remember when George Price said it grated on him when he heard some group sing our national anthem as if it was a dirge? Please, BNTU! (This piece is continued elsewhere in the column.)

An explanation of Pehreh’s oomph behind Shyne

It’s just fascinating how these TWO guys have hijacked the party next in line to lead our country. This pair, they are birds of one feather. The evidence I have is that neither entered politics because of any great social conscience. Many who attach themselves to Shyne, do so because he has money, but Pehreh, who says he is a hopeless romantic and who I say is a theater fanatic, is with him through family connections and by nationality, a BelAm thing. For Pehreh, it’s a love story that goes way back to Dean Lindo. It’s a special fit for him because the Barrows and the Finnegans dehn ku taak tu.

There are reports of foreign money backing this UDP. In our first encounter with foreign money in our politics, it was from foreign government to, ehm, freedom fighters. We were a colony then, and for the treason, certain people were under charge for selling out the country “lock, stock, and barrel”. There is yeri-soh that the red camp received very suspect money prior to the 1979 general election from foreign individuals. Shyne is said to be getting finance from people abroad who have no connection to Belize. He has even picked up foreign endorsements.

Somebody please tell us it’s a damned lie that the UDP has written to the Saudis to complain because the government has changed the site of the university hospital? My, my, the motivation for such a game is too obvious.

In times to come, the only male teachers in high school will be from Caleb’s clan

A couple times I’ve reported on a story from the US press which quoted a judge as saying that the female teacher had too many gifts to be teaching boys, and she agreed and found a new profession. This story about school girls and the way they wear their hair has many plots, and one that those who support them are ignoring is the effect on male teachers. Some males who have taught in high school will tell you ih noh easy. Male teachers who support the simple hairdos requirement are begging the system to reduce the stress.

Ouch, I’ll run out of page space, so for now I leave you with this hair story.

In my childhood story, “Growing up in Old Belize,” there’s a clip about three girls who dominated the minds of the little boys of Holy Redeemer — one black, one brown, and one cream. Ooh, those girls were something!

Aha, a white Mestizo boy sat directly behind the black beauty. I don’t know wherefrom that boy got the boldness; maybe because his family was well off, very well off, or maybe because he was just a little farad; or maybe it was just the pressure of sitting in the seat behind this luscious girl day after day; but he upped one afternoon and caressed her ponytail, and she spun around and cuffed him. The responses of us little boys to the assault and to the response to the assault were, respectively, “how dare he” and “maybe it would have been sufficient punishment for her to point in his face.”

Whiff of arrogance… (continued)

I think it’s a fair charge that government acted with arrogance, and it being our money that they spend, we have every right to harbor suspicion; but to say there’s corruption here, well, I don’t know. Brother Glen, the price of land in Belmopan is sky high!

Brother Nigel Petillo said that a quarter mile away he had land on sale for $150,000 an acre. We’d get a better sense of why that land is valued less than “our” parcel if we knew exactly where it was. We gather it is on the north side of the highway; we don’t know if the hydro lines run through or very near it; we don’t know if it is near to the adult entertainment center called Rancho.

In the rapidly expanding Belize, we’ve seen small farm plots near urban areas being converted to residential lots hand over fist. That alone caused the price of land to go up, but what really made things go crazy are the large parcels that big private money bought up near to urban areas. Our self and independence governments have some guilt, but my stats are that, for the most part, those large parcels near to urban areas were privately owned from colonial days. Staying with innocence, Belmopan must have been severely strapped for cash to sell those parcels to a couple entrepreneurs in 2018, or the entrepreneurs had promised to set up some business that would create a lot of jobs for the capital. Wow, how “lucky” they were in 2024 to be sitting where government thinks is the best spot for the tertiary level university hospital.

Returning to this parcel Mr. Petillo has put up to show that government paid too much for the two parcels it bought, at $150,000 per acre government would have paid a little over $2 million for 15 acres of it. That’s $4.9 million less than we paid the entrepreneurs, $4 million less than Commissioner Brackett said we should pay them. We cannot ignore the unanswered questions about Mr. Petillo’s parcel. We also cannot ignore that the parcels government bought are in a rapidly expanding residential area. And we cannot ignore what the court would have ordered us to pay, had the entrepreneurs decided not to sell, and we decided to acquire. Add in the lawyers “feed” and the waste of the court’s time.

Those who suggest that government should have compulsorily acquired the property are surprising, because we just came through land debacles with landowners named Villanueva and Zabaneh. Private owners always, always bos wi rugudungz da court. It’s capitalism. It’s only in capitalism that 99 murderers go free so one innocent doesn’t go to jail. We can only pray that the Angelfish Caye owners who were thwarted have a conscience.

The argument that it would be good for Belmopan to have the hospital at UB, we really can skip that. All this sewer pond talk comes from people shooting off the hip, so we can skip that too.

I am careful about questioning the sincerity of public employees. I know we question politicians, and they have earned that. If we bring the same cynicism to top public employees, we might as well close down the country. Public employees thought the university hospital would not serve the nation best bak a UB, and advised government to look elsewhere. Those in the land business found a place, and set a price on it. Mr. Brackett’s valuation wasn’t pulled out of a hat.

Hmm, how government made the switch was quite arrogant. They put the blame on haste. All I will say about that at this time is that government might have felt ownership for the project, they having gone abroad to “beg” for it. They said UB; they said NOT UB. I applaud the answer-seeking, but I don’t know about the loudness of the condemnation of this particular government decision re: the price paid. It is high, but the price of land in certain areas is outrageously high. Yes, there are questions we can and should ask.

By the way, we can hope that BTL is selling land, not because the company is brok, as the UDP says, but because they see a mint to be made on Belmopan property at this time.