Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is slated to hold its first business session since the 31 members were elected to office on February 7. By all indications, it will be a full session for legislators, who will for the first time receive a number of bills for major constitutional amendments – not the least among them being changes in the law to allow for “preventative detention” and the recall of elected officials.

I am taking time out to write to you personally. Please look before you leap. Amending the Constitution to allow for preventive detention and for expanded powers that would allow Government to intercept private communications, will be the biggest mistake you can make! You are obviously a well read and intelligent man. Look at other governments that have gone down this path. This is a case where the proposed “cure” is worse than the disease!

The Belize Audubon Society and the Forestry Department collaborating to slow down Honorable “Clear the Land” Castro in his road making business is like manna from heaven for all those tired area reps who are bush tired spent after the campaign. Now they got big excuse. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the bogus shush by the water cooler as they explain away doing nothing …for too many stumbling blocks.

The oversized pre-general election campaign signs that screamed “PUP HIRE/UDP FIRE” caused fierce confrontation at the corner of Princess Margaret Drive and Freetown Road, Belize City, between the opposing camps of the then government, the People’s United Party (PUP), who installed the signs, and the then Opposition, the United Democratic Party, who the signs grieved.

Are there other “Santa Rosas” that we don’t know about?

Last week’s article was pure anger. Why? Because time and time again, “reasons” have been found to let the wealthy and powerful in our society get away while “ordinary people” are arrested, charged, convicted and sent to jail for next to nothing in comparison. A person who I respect told me that he loved the article, but “maybe I was too hard on the old man.” He does have a point, but my words were never intended to be personal. It’s just that as long as the wealthy and powerful among us are almost worshipped as though they are gods and given every benefit of the doubt, we have made no progress as a nation and we will make no progress until those attitudes are modified.

I make it my business to read every bit of news in the local papers almost every week. I’ve been doing that since I was about ten or eleven years old. I have read about some highs in my time, and some lows. I say, what was reported on, on the local political scene this week, has taken us down to the pits…lower than we have ever been before.

How do you like this PUP, Braa? They set up three brothers on a full color television station to discuss party business…choosing of a new leader from among three boxers. The three brothers are all riding with the same candidate, and they are singing his virtues to the nation. And they are hanging dirty linen, shush pan tap a shush, pan the other two. The one da Albert Street di ketch hell, and the one da OW di get brush. But the one that they love on Positive V is getting da love. Aha, we are to listen, but we are not to join the fun. Yap, don’t butt into our business, they say. And then they spread more dirty linen on the line.

As promised, the Barrow administration has posted the agreement that the previous Government of Belize signed last month with the new owners of the Universal Health Services on its website, www.governmentofbelize.gov.bz.

Stop order for outstanding cheques from PUP administration

Most Belizeans are as comfortable with the foreign affairs business of our country as they are with the concept of “the peter principle”. Belizeans are at a loss where matters of our international relations are concerned. This will have to change, but it will take some time and some doing. We hope to accomplish this with a series of columns.

The United Democratic Party (UDP) has not only managed to shatter the People’s United Party’s dominance in last week’s landslide victory in the general elections, but it has also penetrated two major political strongholds of the People’s United Party – Belize Rural Central (which Ralph Fonseca controlled since its creation in 1993), and Corozal North (which the PUP has won in every election since the division first appeared on the register in 1961).

Director of the Office of Governance, Myrtle Palacio, responded today via a press release to calls from the Opposition, the United Democratic Party (UDP), for her to excuse herself from the election process.

SPEAR says 4 UDP districts, new poll says 4 PUP