The DHS, Dr. Marvin Manzanero, is a man who speaks very softly, and so sometimes the full weight of what he says does not impact the nation as much as it should. Those of us who listen to every word he says did not miss the weight of his message when he called on Belizeans to try and stay home. This COVID-19 is getting worse, and we are setting ourselves up for some harsher times if we don’t show some restraint now.

The message from the DHS is that those who can afford to lock down have to do so to help save the country. If you’re a retiree, stay home. If you are a child, stay home. If you can afford to take a month off from work, stay home. If you can do your work from home, do so. The authorities can’t lock us down, because the country has no money, so we have to lock down ourselves if we can.

Mr. Romel Cuello, whose letters to the editor appear in the Amandala frequently, always has serious things to say, and we should pay special heed to the words he wrote in his letter in the Friday issue of the Amandala.

This COVID-19 is reducing us daily, and the loss of a precious little child on Saturday should make some of us get the full sense of how bad it is. The most important statistic to grasp if we will understand the gravity of the situation is not the fatality rate based on the number of positive cases, but it is deaths per 100,000 of the population, and in that area we are doing worse than most countries in the world.

Data taken from the website Statista.com last week shows that the death rate per 100,000 persons in Honduras is 26.8; in Guatemala it is 20.5; in El Salvador, 14.4; and in Jamaica, 5.9. The numbers listed by Wikipedia put Belize at 10.4, and Barbados, 2.4.

Our death rate per 100,000 is exploding. Last week we were at 10.4, and this week we are at 13.3 (based on a population of 375,000).

Romel called for us to cut down on alcohol sales, and we must understand that that counsel didn’t come from the likes of Ms. Sandra Coye or Mr. Louis Wade, two of our leading lights who unfortunately have expressed extreme and disappointing bias against the consumption of rum and the smoking of weed.

What do those two know? You know, there’s this story about a man who underwent an operation to curb the manufacture of alcohol in his stomach. That pair might have natural high. Well then, they should be grateful, say thanks to God, for giving them their personal distillery which turns out the prime alcohol in just the right amounts to keep them happy. It’s an age-old story — the haves hibbing words at the have-nots.

Mr. Romel said he believes that persons who like to socialize are causing an increase in the disease, and many among the socializers are drinkers. Mr. Romel said, “If GOB is serious, they have to implement ‘no alcohol sales’ — ‘ley seca’, for a while, plus make the police get stiff on the mask wearing. Methinks a ‘hundred-dollar ticket’ would be much better than taking them to jail, unless they absolutely refuse to put it on.”

I hate it, I hate it like thousands of us hate it, but Mr. Romel is right when he says we have to go dry. I am not so much a problem on the socializing, because I am happy to drink alone, but I am willing to give it up in solidarity, for the cause. The authorities have thrown up their hands; it’s up to us now.

Our country is staggering, and things are headed downhill. I believe some businesses can absorb the ley seca for a while, and for the love of Belize they should do their part.

A thousand brama

Some years ago my father-in-law, Elias Banner, told me a story about a guy who fell on hard times, and his brother gave him a job to tend his flock of sheep. Well, if you don’t know, sheep and goats are pesky bohgaz that are never satisfied with the pasture they are in; they will test the fence to try and get out. The short of the story is that the sheep ran the brother ragged, until he quit, gave up the job he needed, and went home to try and pick up the pieces of his life.

Before he left, the brother thanked his brother for the job, and then he told my father-in-law that he was grateful to have been given a chance to earn his keep, but he regretted that his brother gave him sheep to care for. “He should have given me brama (Brahman cattle),” the man said. “I prefer a thousand brama to one sheep.”

I was born in Belize City and spent my childhood there. I spent my teenage years in Belmopan, and my adult years in Camalote, a village on the George Price Highway. My first profession was fisherman, but since I went to agriculture school at Central Farm, I list my profession as farmer.

I am saying that I’m very familiar with much of life in Belize, and that when I tell you a thousand times I would prefer to be the area representative for Cayo South or Belmopan than to be the representative of an area in Belize City, it’s coming from someone who has some understanding of the different worlds in our country.

Hmm, I see that the whole redistricting thing has helped the UDP at the polls, because their ever overly calculating selves have pushed the defense of the baby into the arms of the PUP. The UDPeez did say that they weren’t game to do it now, and they were in charge, in position to get it done for 13 years, but of late they have been playing Pontius Pilate, for their political gain.

I support redistricting, and the letter of the law is the letter of the law, but I prefer that a commitment to a serious discussion be made in the first year of the next administration, and that the EBC (Elections and Boundaries Commission) be taken out of the control of the government so that we can make the best decisions for the country.

We are not the only country with these redistricting issues. FairVote at the website, fairvote.org, in a story titled, “Population vs. Electoral Votes”, said that in the US “the number of people per electoral vote in one state is very different than the number of people per electoral vote in another.”

FairVote said that in 2008 the average number of Americans per electoral vote was 565,166, but the state of Wyoming, which had an estimated 532,668 Americans in 2008, got three electoral votes, which “corresponds to 177,556 people.” Breaking the numbers down, FairVote said the people in Wyoming “have 3.18 times as much clout in the Electoral College as an average American, or 318%.”

Looking at the value of an American vote based on the state where they live, a graph from FairVote showed that in 2008 a vote in California was worth 94%, Florida 87%, Iowa 108%, South Dakota 199%, Wyoming 287%, Arizona 101%, Vermont 250%, New York 88%, Texas 94%, and Alaska 236%.

Natasha Frost, in a 2019 story in Quartz (qz.com) titled “The UK’s electoral system is a disaster for democracy”, said “voters go to the polls to elect a local MP for their geographic constituency. The party with the most local MPs, or seats, wins. Some constituencies have about 100,000 voters or more, others have as few as 20,000. But no matter the population size of constituency, they still each get one seat.”

I don’t think that those big, developed countries having problems means that we should accept ours. But it is not an A-B-C process to redistrict.