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FROM THE PUBLISHER

PublisherFROM THE PUBLISHER


Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, and his Vice-President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, assumed the Presidency of the United States, then went on to defeat the Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election.


At some point, Nixon emerged from political oblivion, I think, to become the Governor of California. And then he became the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1968.


President Johnson declined to run in 1968. The Vietnam War had become a problem he could not solve, and the United States was seriously, violently divided by Vietnam and by racial issues. Between 1965 and 1968, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy (the younger brother of President John Kennedy) had all been assassinated. Hubert Horatio Humphrey became the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1968.


Nixon won the Presidency. How sweet that victory must have been! It was as if he had returned from the political dead. With the bitter memories of 1960 still in his mind, however, he must have been extra determined to win re-election in 1972. At the highest levels of the Nixon re-election campaign, a break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel was sanctioned and organized. Nixon won a landslide re-election victory over the Democratic Party candidate, George McGovern, in 1972.


But a year or two later, an American newspaper, THE WASHINGTON POST, broke the story of the Watergate Hotel break-in, and an investigation began which became known as the Watergate scandal. It was absolutely fascinating to see how the Nixon administration sought to cover up its knowledge of, and involvement in, the Watergate break-in, while the American political system, using the Senate, the Congress, special prosecutors and so on and so forth, fought to get at the truth. The public drama lasted months and months in the most powerful country in the world. And eventually Richard Nixon, the most powerful man in that most powerful country, had to tender his resignation. (He was replaced as President by Vice-President Gerald Ford, who then officially pardoned Nixon of all wrongdoing. For the record, Ford served out the rest of Nixon?s term, then lost to the Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.)


The key to the Watergate scandal was that the break-in at the Watergate Hotel was a criminal act, and because it was a criminal act, the Nixon White House was forced to disassociate itself from the Watergate felons. So the White House began to lie, and Nixon ended up becoming the victim of that tangled web of deceit.


The Social Security Board controversy in which the nation of Belize is now enmeshed, does not have at its core a single wanton act of outrageous criminality. At least, there is no such act that I know of as I write. It appears to me that public funds began to be used in a cavalier, reckless and careless manner. The umbrella under which all of the transactions were taking place was the PUP manifesto promise to ?grow the economy.? Under that umbrella, a culture of throwing public money around, took root and then flourished.


The danger to the present government administration would derive from any decision it may have made, at any given time, to cover up Social Security Board transactions which it now considers shameful. If GOB, at the highest levels, decided to cover up, then the chances are that high government officials, in pursuance of such cover up, may have lied.


If whatever Senate hearing will be held, includes the questioning of high officials under oath, and such officials have lied in the past, then the danger would be great to the ruling party. Where the matter of cover up is concerned, for instance, the nation was told this Tuesday night by the accountant Cedric Flowers that he is positive, on his own recognizance, that vital documents were removed from SSB files. But my understanding from both Cedric and Senator Ambrose Tillett is that the so-called Senate hearing does not provide for penalties for those who may perjure themselves.


In the United States, people go to jail for perjury, and the way how the Watergate story was investigated, if I remember correctly, people who were in danger of going to jail talked about other people in order to get better deals for themselves.


Those people who have advised me in the past, especially Dr. Leroy Taegar, point out that the American system, which is a republican one, is substantially different from the Belizean political system, which is derived from a monarchical model.


The sense I have gotten from these advisers is that it would be substantially more difficult in our system, than it is in the American system, for a scandal such as the Social Security Board scandal, for argument?s sake, to force a high level resignation.


Belize is still quite early in our inquiry into the problems of the Social Security Board. The American and Belizean political systems are different. And so are the Watergate break-in and the Social Security Board transactions. The one thing that is similar, nevertheless, is the fact that there are people in the 2004 SSB scandal, as there were people in the Watergate scandal in 1974, from the bottom to the top, who will be looking to protect themselves.


At a certain point when pressure comes on more and more, people who are involved in compromising activities reach a point where it becomes a case of ?every man for himself and God for us all.? I don?t know if our system in Belize can bring on pressure to that extent in this matter. If it cannot, then no sanctions can be imposed.


As a journalist and political observer, what intrigues me is the predicament and behaviour of the various principals in the piece, and how they choose to adjust to developments in the drama as they unfold. In these crises, the easiest choice, in the first instance, is to lie. But, in the case of Watergate, there were second instances, third instances, fourth instances, and so on down the line. Lies had to be told to cover lies, and a United States President fell ?

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