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Thursday, March 28, 2024

World Down Syndrome Day

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EditorialCustomer loyalty


This past year has been the most turbulent in our young nation?s 24 -year existence. Our democracy has survived the months of confrontation and conflagration, survived long enough so that those who were/are aggrieved could see the opportunity to present their positions in an electoral forum which would be reasonably decisive without being dangerously violent. This is the electoral forum offered by March 1 municipal elections next year.


There were times during this year?s uproar when this newspaper has been seriously anti-government. We have no regrets and offer no apologies. Importantly in 2005, we never forgot what it is exactly that we are – a newspaper. In years past, in the 1970s and 1980s, there have been periods when we forgot that we were a newspaper. Our explanation for these periods of emotional excess is that we were born out of an activist street movement which fought imperialism and racism with all the weapons at that movement?s disposal.


It is said that a people get the leaders they deserve. So that, when we Belizeans have leaders who are corrupt, we have to examine our own consciences. If we had the opportunities for self-aggrandizement which Belize?s elected politicians have, how many of us would maintain absolute purity? There are many Belizeans who appear not to be outraged by the manifest corruption. The ruling PUP still has a solid base of support, especially, apparently, in the rural areas where the mass media are less powerful.


The PUP administration survived the various challenges to its rule between January and April of this year, because of that solid base of support, because it made strategic compromises, and because its political opposition, the United Democratic Party, was unable to prove that it had acquired overwhelming support.


It became clear this year in Belize that the stakes here were disproportionately large. By this we mean to say that in a country this small, there is an extraordinary amount of money and other resources which appear to be available to the various players in the game. From whence did all this wealth derive? How long can a poor newspaper like this one continue to dominate in a market which has changed so radically in the past three decades?


Our heads spin with all the dizzying developments in Belize this year. Praise God, one thing we can cling to is the customer loyalty we enjoy. We don?t say it often enough, but we are properly grateful.


All power to the people.

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