It is clear to anyone who doesn’t have blinders on that Mr. Troy Gabb is an unabashed Ashcrofite. Brother Rufus X said, many years ago, that Dean Barrow was also an Ashcrofite. If Barrow is an Ashcrofite, and Gabb is an Ashcrofite, it follows that Gabb should not be throwing barbs Barrow’s way. Hmm, let’s see, the friend of my hero should be my, hmm, hmm … there’s a string and a handler somewhere in this story, but let’s confine ourselves to the currents on the surface and stay out of trouble.
Ah, before the power surge in 2008, I asked my UDP friends how Dean Barrow could divorce himself from service to Ashcroft when he was the gentleman’s favorite lawyer. They told me that he was using the earnings from his contract with the British wealthy man to help finance the UDP’s campaign to defeat the PUP, and that when the UDP took up the reins he would shed the contract and serve only the people.
If words and gestures speak the entire truth, Barrow shed the contract, but it looks like Mr. Ashcroft got sweeter deals from him than what he got from the Blue an White.
The UDP was already rolling in Petro Caribe funds, when in September of 2015 the Prime Minister reportedly shook Ashcroft’s hands in a secret room in Miami, and returned with the golden share to Belize. The reports I have is that we paid 470 or so million dollars (Gabb likes to say on his Love FM business hour that it was $500 million), and a major part of the settlement was to have come back to Belize in the form of development projects, which never materialized. The UDPeez insist that an accommodation agreement was what forced the price of BTL to the stratosphere.
Shortly after this “coup”, or before the people got a chance to go through the numbers in the settlement, Barrow dissolved the House and called for a general election on November 4, 2015, which his party won. History will show that Barrow rolled through Petro Caribe so fast that there were reports of major slippage in accounting for the spending of the funds, and he made a bad BTL deal with Ashcroft, all so that his party could win the election and he could gain the accolades of a three-term leader.
Troy Gabb, like all a wi, has a right to beef about BTL, because the whopping price reeks of mismanagement and nepotism, and those factors can’t be ignored when we discuss the national telecommunications company, but I noh hapi wid Mr. Gabb because he uses it to support his love for the criminal privatization that is supported only by lawyers and their accountants.
Troy said on Love FM’s Business Hour that we will never stop paying and we have nothing tangible to show for buying back BTL, nothing that is earning money for us. He has said that the PUC (Public Utilities Commission) could have gotten BTL to respect the interests of the Belizean people. One of our brilliant people said the other day that we cannot get these rich foreigners to sit down and reason with us. It is nonsense to say that the PUC could have controlled Ashcroft. What Gabb should do is go to Said Musa’s office and ask him to explain why the PUC could have no teeth with that gentleman.
We have to keep trying with public ownership. Someday our politicians will be statesmen, not petty party animals. One day another government will come and set up a non-partisan management team for the BTL.
In this lawyers’ paradise in which we live, too much of the BTL story is Barrow playing politics, and he made a bad deal to win the 2015 general election. Now Gabb is playing smart, ignoring all the facts.
Waiting for when they will call the number that play in the Boledo
The story is that there are three bids to take over the Boledo, but all of Belize knows that there is really just one, that put forward by the Olympic Committee. Bah, it is disappointing that the government hasn’t yet announced them as the hands-down winner. There can be only one explanation, and that is that they are waiting to make a grand show to gain the Holy Grail political mileage.
Everything the UDP does is for the glory of the UDP. They can’t come out on top if they stay with their private connection, because if they do they will feel the wrath of the people. There, I’ve just helped them explain to disappointed favorite parties why their hands are bound to do right this time. The baril has been rolled and the correct number has already dropped out. We are just waiting for the call.
The ace the petty Mr. Faber won’t play
If P. Faber had true fiber, he would demand to be leader of the UDP, but we can’t ignore that this UDP has more crooks than the last PUP, so he has a lot of dangerous holes and boulders to get by.
Should love of a political party be stronger than love of one’s country? The answer to that, in the world of the petty Mr. Faber, is resoundingly “yes.” Faber must have the support of at least three others in the House so that he could demand that the government dissolve and new elections be called, and that might be good for the country, but that doesn’t enter the picture because, bikaaz he is party down the line, all the time, UDP first.
Some really harsh words for Warren
Yes, Mike Bloomberg dropped out of the race to represent the Democrats against Donald Trump in November, and no one has more blame for his dropping out than Ms. Elizabeth Warren, who comes from the ranks of modern socialists, like Mr. Bernie Sanders. I have noticed that extremists effect the most change, so Warren and Sanders might be right to hold their bow, but I think you have to have some pragmatism if you are left and you live in the most flagrantly capitalist country on the planet.
The other day Sanders said that Fidel Castro wasn’t the worst man on the planet while he lived, and America was all over him, and that’s the same way Warren and the left were all over Bloomberg at the last debate for contenders from the Democrat side. They, the left, will have all their cake or none ataal, so, it will be none ataal. Sometimes you have to compromise, especially because we don’t live in a perfect world.
Look, not even the Evangelicals, the most powerful group in the USA, world, have it all their way. Who can forget that one of them went to jail because they wouldn’t bake a cake for a loving couple who would have been in hog heaven if Buttigieg had done better at the polls. The Gays are coming, the Gays are coming, and the Evangelicals are running, running straight to Belize, but daam, the Gays are out of the closet here too, threatening to kick down the hoal fence.
Okay, the Democrats will settle for Biden — Bloomberg dropped out, was forced out of the race by the radicals – but I really shouldn’t cry because Trump will win, and while I am not for his pressure on everyone left of center, I’m not ready to go past closet rights, at least not yet. The Gays can come on their ships, but basic home training teaches you that when you’re in Belize, you act as we do. The popular saying is when you’re in Rome, but I couldn’t go there because it is reported that it is they and the Greeks that made this behavior into a raging epidemic.