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BTL shares up, murder rate down, and $600 was “the last straw”

EditorialBTL shares up, murder rate down, and $600 was “the last straw”

BTL Chairman, Markhelm Lizarraga; the company’s CEO, Ivan Tesucum; and the rest of the team at BTL did us proud again. The company reported dividends of 20 cents per share this year, which translates to $6.8 million for the largest shareholder, the government and people of Belize. BTL’s profits would have been much larger if it had maintained a monopoly on telecommunications, as it had in the years when it was under foreign ownership.

Belizeans had been at the helm in telecommunications in Belize for decades, and BTL was turning profits and on top of every advance in the industry when a government, primarily to raise funds to invest in other areas, sold majority control to Lord Ashcroft, a foreign investor. One of the bad things, of a number, about the privatization of BTL, was that the company immediately came under foreign management at the highest levels. There isn’t anything wrong with hiring a foreigner who has expertise we don’t possess in Belize at a given time; no small country can be all things, but placing them at the very top was too colonial. For decades there wasn’t anything in telecommunications that we couldn’t do. Overnight we no longer had the brilliance to get the job done. Now Belizeans are back at the helm, and we are proud again.

Minister of Home Affairs, Hon. Kareem Musa told 7News in mid-November that there have been 78 murders this year. If we hold our grip until the end of December, our murder rate in 2023 will be our lowest since 2000. Based on a population of 400,000, we are on track for a murder rate of a little over 21 per 100,000 this year.

Our most horrific year was 2012. The Belize Crimes Observatory reported 145 murders that year, a murder rate of 42.55 per 100,000. Not far behind on the horror scale was 2018, with 143 murders. In 2020, a year when we were mostly in lockdown and under curfew, there were 102 murders, a rate of 25.83 per 100,000. While we can’t celebrate a murder rate of 21 per 100,000, we must be grateful for the improvement. A more tranquil 2023 (thus far) was achieved without draconian measures. Respect is due to the Minister; the ComPol, Chester Williams; and the entire team.

On another note, the GoB has changed its mind about topping up the telephone allowance of CEOs to $600 per month—$350 dollars more than they were getting. Immediately after learning of the new largesse for the CEOs, the teachers and public officer unions drew a line in the sand. A senior government officer stated that the increase was to bring some CEOs on par with others who were already recipients of the perk, and that in arriving at what seems an obscene telephone allowance GoB had factored in the high cost of call roaming. But that didn’t soften the position of the unions any.

The total bite into the national treasury for a $600-per-month telephone allowance for 16 CEOs is $115,000, which is $67,000 in excess of what we had been paying for CEO phone bills. The GoB has said it needs the best talent to help our country rebound, and top talent might be making demands. Just recently, there was a high-profile retirement from the CEO ranks, as Mr. Kevin Arthurs, a lawyer who was employed for the past three years as CEO in the Ministry of Home Affairs, has ditched public service for private employ.

The proposed increase was hard to justify. Still, it seemed disproportionate for public employees in a $1.4 billion economy to threaten GoB with dire consequences if a stay wasn’t put on the perk. There might be a single, simple explanation. That would be that it was “the last straw.” Post Covid, most countries are struggling, and the unions insist that top personnel in government sacrifice along with the rest of us. The government’s employees were called on to make huge sacrifices during the pandemic, and they are pushing to recover lost earnings. There are reports that GoB is skimping on their allowances, and they are all working under strict budgets.

It is to be hoped that while the unions were rallying the troops to block that $600, they didn’t lose sight of a new development at BTL, that being Chairman Lizarraga’s announcement that Mrs. Narda Garcia, the CEO in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development & Investment, has joined the board of directors of the company. It’s possible Mrs. Garcia is that brilliant, why the PM has put another hat on her head. Or is she there to do the bidding of the relentless Lord Ashcroft, whom we don’t want anywhere near our company?

Many Belizeans are convinced that while playing at “Good Samaritan”, Lord Ashcroft got over a former PM. We reportedly paid over $500 million to get back BTL, and we don’t forget that Lord Ashcroft went on Channel Five and said that we (the poor people of Belize) paid too much for it.

Israel and Manifest Destiny

Raffi Berg, a journalist working for BBC News, in a 2022 article titled, “Israel’s most right-wing government agreed under Benjamin Netanyahu”, said Mr. Netanyahu was “set to serve an historic sixth term as prime minster, after forming a coalition with ‘far-right parties, including one whose leader was once convicted of anti-Arab racism’.” Berg said Netanyahu’s allies reject a two-state solution to end their conflict with the Palestinians. It is no secret that the long-term objective of far right parties in Israel is to annex both Gaza and the West Bank and drive out most of the 5 million Palestinians who live there.

No matter the toll on the lives and properties of innocent Palestinians in Gaza, far right leaders in Israel are going full bore after Hamas, after that organization carried out a terrible terrorist attack on a peaceful gathering in Israel on October 7. What has transpired before the eyes of people all over the world these past several weeks, the slaughter in Gaza, the decimation of Gaza, is rooted in a vicious and criminal doctrine which goes by the name Manifest Destiny in the US. It is the belief by some that they are “chosen” by God above all others.

The Khan Academy, at the website khanacademy.org, says the term “manifest destiny” dates back “to the first colonial contact between Europeans and Native Americans”, and included the belief that “the inherent superiority of white Americans, as well as the conviction that they were destined by God to conquer the territories of North America, from sea to shining sea.” The Khan Academy says the ideology “justified extreme measures to clear the native population from the land, including forced removal and violent extermination.”

Manifest Destiny, the belief of a people that they are chosen above others by God, is at the root of the genocide in the Americas, the enslavement of people from Africa for over 300 years, the Apartheid that was in South Africa, and the obliteration of Gaza.

In The Acts 17: 24-26, the Apostle Paul said: “God that made the world and all things therein…He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And had made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth…”. What will it take to make white supremacists get the sense? They are not better than anybody. Columbus, great sailor that he was, did not discover the Americas; he stumbled upon it.

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