Belizeans living across central Belize, particularly those in Belize City and the Belize District, are reeling after being hit by a late season hurricane, Lisa, a Cat 1, on Wednesday. Lisa, which was heading toward Dangriga early Tuesday morning, began edging northward on Tuesday night, and when the eye crossed over Belize on Wednesday afternoon, it was just 10 miles south of Belize City. Category 1 hurricanes aren’t supposed to hit too hard, but Belize City and the villages in the district felt the worst of Lisa— around six long hours of battering from hurricane winds of 85 miles per hour.
Hopefully the families that lost property during the storm will get assistance from friends and relatives at home and abroad, and from the GOB so they can put their lives back in order again. Friendly countries might help a bit with the costs for repairing the massive infrastructural damages that Lisa left in her wake, but the bulk will have to be borne by the government and people of Belize, through our taxes. Early on Tuesday it seemed that Dangriga was in Lisa’s crosshairs, which meant that much of the citrus crop would be wiped out; and if she had edged just a little farther south that the fragile banana plantations would be flattened. Instead, Lisa veered to the north, and wrought her havoc on the population center of our country.
We must demand that our leaders handle our money wisely
We don’t have much control over these weather phenomena, not much besides treating our forests and sea and air with the reverence they deserve. What we have control over are the leaders we choose to serve us. Partly, maybe even largely, because our leaders manage with much focus on the next election, Belize has never had the cash reserves to sufficiently address the disaster left behind by a hurricane that punches us in the nose.
In 2022 it is too much to expect, especially after having been mired in a pandemic for two years, that our GOB is flush with cash to immediately do all the necessary repair work and get Belizeans who were knocked down by Lisa back up and running at full speed again. But in normal times we have seen our leaders use our money to win general elections, while depositing very little into our emergency fund. Is it our fault that they do so?
Maybe we have to invest more into understanding our system, specifically this five-year electoral cycle. Politicians, as our first leader said, are in business to win elections. Our business is to get the best out of the people we put into office.
Environmentalists are happy about Lula’s victory in Brazil
Environmentalists across the globe breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday when news rolled in that leftist leader, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, called Lula, had defeated incumbent right wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the presidential runoff election held in Brazil. When the region that has been described as “the lungs of the world” — the Amazon in Brazil, the world’s largest rain forest — was being devastated by fire in 2019, President Bolsonaro, to the dismay of environmentalists the world over, as much as said “burn baby, burn!”
Left wing leaders, socialists, are as concerned about the economic performance of their country as right wing leaders are, but, unlike right wing leaders, left wing leaders feel that progress must come by making moves that are in harmony with the earth, not by devastating it. Right wing leaders and their followers might take exception to being described as persons who don’t mind “devastating” the earth for their ends, and maybe that is excessive, but also, it might be a euphemism to say otherwise about people who say climate change is a hoax and ozone depletion caused by greenhouse gas emissions is exaggerated, and who express no distress over the extinction of species caused by human efforts to dominate the earth.
The “Pink Tide” got a new member with the election of Lula, his victory bringing to nearly a dozen the countries in our region that are led by left-leaning presidents. Would that our sister Caribbean country, Haiti, find the correct leadership to put it on the path of peace and prosperity! Millions of people in the Americas have had enough of right wing leaderships that push a trickle-down-economics system that has killed the hopes of the masses in our region. For far too many young people in our region, hope lies only in getting a Green Card to the USA.
As we mentioned in a previous editorial, these leftist leaders are not anti-Washington, not pro-Russia; they are about answering the demand of their people who clamor for a better life. Left-leaning parties in the Americas share much with the Democratic Party in the US, including views on the environment, taxation, the delivery of health services, and gender issues (LGBT). Among the first to congratulate Lula was US president, Joe Biden, a Democrat, who said his victory came “following free, fair, and credible elections”, and that he was looking “forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries in the months and years ahead.”
Left-leaning governments believe that the rich should pay their taxes. Lula was in office for eight years previously, from 2003 to 2010, and he is credited with lifting over 20 million Brazilians out of poverty. Under US president Barack Obama, a Democrat, great strides were made toward universal health care in that country. Similarly, universal health care was one of the goals of the Lula governments in Brazil, and much was achieved.
Gender issues/LGBT rights is as controversial a matter as any, and with the coming of Lula, that group at the least is hopeful after being under the rule of the openly homophobic Bolsonaro. Human Rights Watch said that immediately after his victory Lula “committed to fighting hunger, poverty, violence against women and Indigenous people, racism, and Amazon deforestation.”
There was no mention there of LGBT rights in that victory speech, but left wing leaders have been very favorable to the group. Under the left-leaning AMLO, same-sex marriage became legal in all of Mexico’s 31 states this month; Cuba, under Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, approved same-sex marriage in a referendum in September this year; and Uruguay, under former left wing leader José Mujica, licensed gay marriage in 2013. But Lula, if that is his inclination, might not be able to deliver that prize to the LGBT because of a strong Evangelical lobby in Brazil.
The Atlantic said the evangelical group in Brazil grew from 6.6% to 22.2% in 2010, and The New York Times said Evangelical Christians now make up 30% of the Brazilian population. Primary among this group’s concerns are the increase in gay and abortion rights, and they figured significantly in the 49% of votes garnered by Bolsonaro on Sunday.
It’s no small job new Brazil president Lula has in front of him. At this newspaper we champion the masses, and the environment, both of which were at the core of his campaign platform. And that’s what the Brazilian people voted for last Sunday.