All past Prime Ministers of this country have made sure that Cabinet members always outnumbered the backbenchers. Sometimes it is fifteen Cabinet members against 14 backbenchers. Sometimes it is sixteen against thirteen. The recent downsizing of the Cabinet announced by Prime Minister Musa is an attempt to pull the wool over unwary eyes. Together, the smaller number of Ministers added to the larger number of Ministers of State still add up to sixteen government-committed votes in the House. Although Ministers of State are not required to attend Cabinet meetings, they do and are co-opted into a ?collective responsibility? mindset even if they had been totally opposed to a specific Cabinet decision.

The appointed Senate of seven Government, and six Opposition and social partner Senators, continues to concentrate absolute power in the Executive, that is, Cabinet.

We need to reform the system of Government in Belize in such a way that power becomes less concentrated and more controllable. We need to urgently democratize the system to achieve a real separation of powers.

Recent meetings of the Senate on matters of utter national importance have shown time and time again, that our much-lauded Senate is impotent from preventing the passage of any Cabinet bill, even if that proposed law goes against the very grain of our constitution and national interest.

It has also been shown time and time again that in the chambers of the appointed Senate, where the Government appoints seven Senators and the Opposition and Social Partners select six Senators, the will and wishes of Cabinet are sacrosanct and prevail every time.

We must bear in mind that this system in effect prevents our Opposition Senators and Social Partner representatives in the Senate from protecting our national interest, even though we are paying them to do so from our public purse. In effect, our Opposition Senators and social partner representatives in the Senate are jointly handcuffed.

The fact is glaringly evident that even at sittings of the House of Representatives, those members who speak out in opposition to Cabinet bills are handcuffed, and in some instances, even ?mouth cuffed?, ensuring for the Prime Minister a rubber stamp House and a rubber stamp Senate.

The people of Belize therefore have no hope that their demands for full transparency and accountability will be seriously addressed, notwithstanding highly trumpeted manifesto promises so to do. More glaringly evident is the fact that our very Constitution prohibits our ?appointed? Senate from voting against any Cabinet money bill. This indicates that we can effectively do nothing legislatively to stop new taxes from being imposed upon us, jump high or jump low. Neither can we effectively control how Government is spending our taxes or public monies.

Whenever an oppressive Government consistently introduces more taxes and leaves the burden on the poor, exempting the rich, then to quote a sister country?s Constitution, ?it is the duty and the right of the people to demand and to form a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.?

Belize deserves a better future. We must begin to reorder the power of the Senate by demanding our right to freely elect our Senators. And we must believe and trust in ourselves to elect the right Senators, who will deliver what they are being entrusted and paid to do, defend our Constitution and our national interest.

In pledging his full support for an elected Senate, former Minister of National Security, Jorge Espat, said in the House of Representatives on December 7, 2001, ?The exclusion of the Belizean electorate to elect 75 percent of the members of the Senate is itself a central problem in our democratic situation, where so often we exclude our citizens from major governing issues. It mocks. It smacks of the colonial Governor appointing our counsels. It is not a declaration of faith in our democracy and in Belizeans. We need to restore equity in our politics to disperse and democratize power.?

(Signed)

Lucilo Teck

Deputy National Coordinator

We the People Reform Movement (W.T.P.)

August 6, 2005

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