On page 18 of an article published in the Friday, March 19, 2021 issue of this newspaper, Bill Lindo wrote as follows: “In 2005 Said Musa decided to follow the advice of Belize’s G-7 movement and their homegrown austerity measures. The result was one of the worst defeats the PUP suffered. Austerity never works. It is against human nature.”

I found the Lindo statement incredible, and I found it disingenuous, if not downright dishonest. Bill Lindo knows that the G-7 movement was formed in August of 2004 in an attempt to put a “brakes” on wild borrowing and spending in Belize’s public sector under a People’s United Party (PUP) government led by Rt. Hon. Said Musa, Prime Minister.

Had Bill chosen to publish this statement in any other medium besides the newspaper I publish, I would have had nothing to say. But he chose to use this newspaper to confuse the Belizean people.

There were two sacred cows in the PUP hierarchy who were in charge of the wild borrowing and spending which was dubbed “growth economics” by the government propagandists. The two sacred cows essentially controlling public money in Belize were Ralph Fonseca and Glenn Godfrey. These are Bill Lindo’s good friends. It was a scandal in the Social Security Board, controlled by Glenn Godfrey, in late July of 2004, which sparked the discourses which preceded the formation of G-7.

In attacking the G-7 attempt to curb wild borrowing and spending and describing such an attempt as “austerity,” Bill Lindo is seeking to take Fonseca and Godfrey off the hook for a process which led, in the first instance, to the Superbond, and in the second instance, to the atmosphere in the Musa and Dean Barrow governments which has led us to this financial crisis in which Belize now finds itself.

There are many areas where Bill Lindo and I agree. That is why he has had practically unlimited access to this newspaper for decades and decades. On the occasion of the statement to which I referred in the first paragraph, however, Bill is taking this newspaper for “pappyshow.” Straight like that.