In the eras when Belize was led by St. John’s College graduates, Right Honorable George Price (PUP) and Honorable Dr. Manuel Esquivel (UDP), Belize played it safe, preferring to operate with a firm grip on national finances. The eyes of these leaders never got too big when foreigners came to invest in our country.

It can be argued that Price never really got to manage the economy of an independent Belize. We got our independence in 1981, and before Price could restart his engine after the exhausting journey to attain that goal, he was out of office, in 1984. Price was Prime Minister between 1989 and 1993, but everyone knows that was titular.

George Price was an ascetic. He had trained for the priesthood, a vocation that calls for one to be dedicated to poverty. He never moved into a mansion. He lived in his old family home, and he traveled the country in a Land Rover because it was the toughest vehicle around and most of Belize’s highways were not paved, and the feeder roads were very tough terrain.

Price tried to run an honest government. It must be noted that for most of his time in office he was under the watch of the British; however, they never had to call him in to rap his knuckles about his handling of the country’s finances.

It is claimed that on some occasions when Price traveled abroad on government business he carried his clothing and toiletries in a carton box. That is not impossible to believe when we consider other facts about the man. He preferred the hard grind of agriculture to the quick cash in tourism, because he saw great dignity in the former, and he worried about how a service industry would impact the national psyche of a nation that had suffered through slavery and colonialism.

Price expected Belizeans to be as frugal as he was. He was wary of big business interests coming in and taking control of our economy. He reportedly said we could handle hard times because if things got really bad, we could eat pupsi and kraana. When his 1979-1984 government got into cash flow difficulties, he didn’t rush off and sell national assets to foreigners to balance the budget.

Manuel Esquivel was about as tight with money as George Price was, just as wary of foreigners, just as dedicated to running an honest government. Esquivel served as Prime Minister for two terms, and it was in his second administration that he really showed who he was.

His 1993-1998 administration, the second, owed a carryover pay raise to public servants. The previous administration (PUP) had agreed to a pay raise for public officers, to be done over three years, and public officers had received two increments when Esquivel’s government took over. Esquivel looked at the books and decided it would stretch his government’s finances too much, so he renegotiated the third tranche, and later in that administration he would send home hundreds of public servants to reduce the wage bill.

The Esquivel governments, in probably their only break from their characteristic tightfisted handling of national finances, splurged 30 million dollars on a building for the Central Bank. Esquivel sold shares the government had in the national telecommunications company, but did not allow any foreign company to control the asset. He dealt with corruption wherever it reared its head.

When the governments of Price and Esquivel left office, it was the turn of the boys from St. Michael’s College, two lawyers, Honorable Said Musa and Right Honorable Dean Barrow. Musa said his Belizean people liked nice things, and the Belizean people have seen that Barrow likes nice things. In the twenty plus years this pair has been at the helm, Belize has seen some real big spending.

In order to get the money to pay for the nice things his people desired, Said Musa sold majority interests in the three major public utilities —  telecommunications, electricity, and water – to foreigners. Giving up majority shares in the telecommunications company led us to a financial bath, and it would also lead to national embarrassment when the company didn’t respect the PUC; rejection, when the company refused interconnection with another telephone company; humiliation, when the company was sold to another foreigner, who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay; and humiliation/deception, when the company had to be handed back to the former foreign owner along with an accommodation agreement.

Privatizing the electricity company would lead to the construction of dams that were built at questionable cost – there were accusations of government ministers siphoning off huge sums, in the millions –and accusations by some experts that the dams were set in areas that didn’t meet all the environmental requirements.

Musa’s adventure with big foreign investment in the water utility didn’t go under, for the company that bought it quickly decided to return the company to local control.

To the great detriment of Belize, Barrow’s governments also acted naively when dealing with foreign investors. One Barrow government retook the electricity company, the part that runs the distribution of electricity, and that was a smooth transaction that they got major points for, until he explained in the House of Representatives, on Friday, that Belizeans owe the electricity company a whopping 50 million dollars.

Many Belizeans, quite likely most, believe that essential utilities should be under public control, but the justification for taking back the electricity company was that they were demanding an unjustifiable increase in rates. Barrow taking back the electricity company, like Musa selling the water company, didn’t see foreign investors taking us to the cleaners. The worst of the foreign invasions in Barrow’s administrations was to come.

The Barrow government led Belize to a shellacking when it nationalized the telecommunications company; we ending up paying an outrageous sum. Belizeans are still stunned by our losses, because we sent out our best lawyers, and we knew the company wasn’t worth what we ended up paying for it.

This was a deep wound, and what made it hurt more was that our Prime Minister had announced that there had been a reasonable settlement with foreign interests, in Miami, and then when the full details were learned we realized that the rich foreigners had, again, whipped us good.

The debacle at Sanctuary Bay should not have been our government’s concern, beyond the bad smell of it having occurred here. The major player in the scam, an American, had reportedly already done wrong to Americans, on American soil. The foreign government knew about the type of fish that had left their borders to do business in our country.

These disasters with foreigners have no end. Prodded by Honorable Kareem Musa, about the Sanctuary Bay scam, Prime Minister Barrow revealed that there had been what he described as an “in principle settlement” reached in Miami, and despite being unable to inform on the details, he assured us that this “in principle agreement” would not cost Belizean taxpayers “a penny.”

That revelation might have comforted us, would have comforted us, if we weren’t still unrecovered from a telecommunications agreement, reached in Miami. We have been bitten in that same spot before. It was not our government that got us into this one, but too many persons connected in various ways to it appear to have opened us up for scrutiny.

There are numerous stories of Americans stepping off a plane, walking into a commercial bank here, and walking out with loans the size of which few Belizeans could ever dream of. Belizeans work too hard for their money. What the average American earns in an hour, it takes us a day to earn. There isn’t any “easy come” money for most of us here.

Poor us; our last two leaders thought/think they were/are sharp enough to play at the table with the people who wrote the book inclusive of the rules, when we should have been properly cautious when dealing with them. Price and Esquivel might have run too tight a ship, but when it came to foreigners they never got a whipping, they never exposed our treasury.