by Colin Hyde

If my vote is required to give Ms. Aria one of the “soon to be” approved BelAm seats in the House, I’m sorry, but she’ll have to find her way to the gallery, to look on. I can’t sweat that her ego will be wounded, especially after doing so much for that cause. This politics, it’s not a tea party. She had my vote locked up. And then she squandered it.

I haven’t looked at the recommendations of the People’s Constitution Commission (I have a digital copy), but I assume all the hot matters are included in those pages. Knowing that common sense will prevail, always prevails, it is only a matter of time until the USA’s Florida/Georgia, California, New York, and Illinois, four, get a seat in the House. I really see no trouble for them to move it forward now, get it over the line, because this PUP is ripe to give up some power, and will without a fuss if it doesn’t have to give up all of its core wikidnis. The PUP needs every help it can get so that Plan 2.0 doesn’t sink beneath the sea. It’s rough out there, really rough.

Now, while I had not been following BelAm ambitions closely, common sense tells me that ideas about how we can make this thing work must have been in and out of the cooker. They will, of course, have to do their own funding, and organize their vote, and pay for their plane tickets and their accommodations here when the House is in session. I think it is practical that for 2026 and 2027 they have observer/commentator status, and then when the PCC report goes to referendum, along with the “legalize it to end the hypocrisy and bias”, we can decide if their observer status with commentator rights can be upgraded to voting rights. It’s a given that if they come to the House and taak sense, they’re in, without reservations.

I’ll get no joy seeing Aria rejected, like Steve in Crooked Tree was, but if it is up to my “vote” to make her the rep from Florida/Georgia, her fate is nyet, signed, sealed and delivered. If you want to know what my bias is, it’s her affinity for Brother S Barrow. Aria completely, absolutely, lock-stock-and-baril threw herself behind his candidacy, and it is so that top executives have to, ehm, go down with the ship.

I’ve listened to Steve at The Stew, and when I lump his thoughts with Aria’s, and that of Aria’s friends on Facebook, kit and caboodle da America they sold out for Shyne B’s candidacy. It occurs to me that the ascendancy of Shyne gave legitimacy to some of our crowd over there, and they feel beholden. And there might be some sympathy for his getting derailed from the plums of gangland life.

To kick off Shyne’s candidacy, Aria opened with a story about what it takes to rise to the top of your game, any game. I say, the BelAms might hone their talents to higher heights, but that wouldn’t be because they work harder; it would be because they have a lot more tools to work with, a far greater support system.

I am not the least bit surprised when Belizeans excel abroad. In the sports world, Marion didn’t surprise me. It is only since our boys in the country stopped working milpa and walking miles to school, and boys in the city/towns stopped backing water for their homes, and our young men stopped working in the forest and on sand lighters, and our girls stopped washing on scrub boards, stopped pounding rice and beating fufu, that we stopped producing football and softball talents that were equal to any in the USA and the world. The talent is there, but we have become bloody soft. If we want to talk intellectual expression, for generations we have had talent here that could square off against the best, the great British. Ms. Kara’s excellence in the theater, naa, it doesn’t surprise me that a Belizean is among da best.   

Regurgitating my dismay with the Shyne candidacy, it isn’t just yesterday that I expressed my feelings about gangland hip hop, the genre that brother excelled in. It isn’t yesterday that I said that music form is sponsored by white supremacy. I admit to a huge bias against unwholesome talk. Blame it on my grampa. In one of my stories I told you how he yanked me out of bed 6:00 one morning and belted me with his sash cord, because I toyed with the governor’s name. My grampa wasn’t an NIP. But he didn’t like disrespect. When I became an adult, I sorted it out and arrived at the decision that my grampa was right. Bah, in Belize you can abuse someone with words, and if they bos you in the mouth, they go to jail. That’s how it is when your country is run by “words-master” lawyers.

I don’t know where resonance and writing in an unwholesome genre give you the standing to steer our country’s economy and foreign affairs. My, the BelAms are stubborn. And sometimes I think they’re kind of stuffy. Yenking around in the richest country, living the American dream, I guess that would cause some to put on airs. They would come down to earth if … wait, wait, they WILL come down to earth when we put them in the House. They will find out that here in Belize, under the microscope, any hollowness in their talk will be exposed.      

Returning to my, ehm, vote, I’m not holding the same hard position on the rank and file in the fraternity. Many a crew has gone off track because of falling under the spell of a charismatic leader. I believe you should cut some slack for the innocents. I’m saying here that for the pure followers, if any thinks they’re House material and need my support, for what it’s worth my door is open. 

Hmm, it just popped into my head that in the initial phase, during observer status, we can give them a vote, a dummy one, just so it is that we don’t have to sift through all of their talk to find out where they stand on things. Another thing just popped into my mind: they of course will have to accept time restrictions on their rants. Staying with hot air, I regret I didn’t caution Tracy to not try and match that longwinded pair in her party, Faber and Shyne. I had it set for the week before the House meeting, but things come up, and things get pushed to the backburner. Keep it short and make it sweet, Tracy.

Ah, here’s something I won’t push back any further. Tell Hugo to pass on our tax money. My gudnis, they must love that brother in Corozal North fu troo. The amount of unright things that fellow did while in office, a mí, he was like that monkey who neva noa that da noh oanli one time ih mi waahn wife. And Corozal North, dehn still gyaahn more, dehn gyaahn it again! He is guilty as sin for a lot of things, and he must begin his penance. 

Whoa there, perdón, I’m at my staccato worst this morning, so let me get back to base kwik, faas, an hori.  Sorry, Ms. Aria, if it’s up to my vote, you will be in the gallery when the four BelAm reps get to say, Madam Speaker. That’s bikaaz yu squander it.

Stop di simpa with sargassum, Minista

I’ve been away from the sea for some time, quite a long time, so I don’t have a front seat view of the sargassum problem. The pictures on the television, they made me aware, but I didn’t get the full jolt until Saturday morning, on XTV, while listening to folk who are making their livelihood on the sea discuss the extent of the menace. I wasn’t aware that the problem went beyond esthetics, that fish were being killed too. It hit home fu real when I learned about the damage the seaweed was doing to the fish stock near the shore. If it’s killing sprat, sorry, sargassum will have to get the sense.

For my two cents, pronto Minista Andre should buy me a ticket, VIP, on a seaworthy boat, so I can get a firsthand, upfront look at the problem. Bah, no PUP is going to buy me a boat ticket, even if it’s for a good cause, so I have to drop my ideas from the gallery. I say, Andre, that boat you have out there, ih luk like poco tiempo. Brother, did I see somebody dumping sargassum on the street? Brother, you are making peat. I don’t think MIDH would approve.

Off the top I can think of a few ways to address the problem, and sifting through them I settled on this one, fu now, until I get a front row seat:  That job doesn’t call for a poco tiempo biskit boat, it calls for a barge. There’s a job for a retired barge and tug from ASR-BSI out there. You’ll need a couple caterpillars, the ones with the long arms. Please, no need to buy them fresh off the shelf. You’ll need to replace the buckets with extended rakes.

Oh no, no, no, don’t dump the sargassum on the island. When you have a baaj full a seaweed head for the coast, to the mud territory west of the island. That’s where you will dump your sargassum until some good use can be found for it. What, sargassum di kill the sprat? If sargassum di kill out our sprat, what wi wahn use fu bait? Stop simpa pan this problem, Minista.