by Colin Hyde

I don’t know what grade Minister Dolores gets for her handling of the other jobs in her portfolio, but on the matter of communal land rights in Toledo, she has to be close to maximum points. In respect to “degree of difficulty”, nobody in the Briceño Cabinet got a more tochiz job to handle. The great Judge Conteh made a magnificent ruling, but left a blank page for us to negotiate and fill out. It has not gone all that smoothly.

All that internal fighting in the UDP might be just so nobody asks them what they have to say about communal land rights. Judge Conteh made his ruling during a PUP government, and almost immediately the ball was passed to the UDP, for 13 years. It is because the UDP didn’t/couldn’t make much headway with the matter that the PUP found it in their lap when they took office in 2020. You know that da noh lee bit a wrong the PUP has done to this country, but anyone or group that has been in existence for 70 years has to have done something good, at least once. They have some points, and thanks to Dolores, are on the road to the maximum possible score on this one.

We live in a damned democracy, you know, a big tent. On the extremes, we have the rich and famous who are greedy, and on the other side of the communal rights matter specifically we have those who see slash and burn (milpa) as a sacrament, our connection with the ancestors. It is true that the milpa system is better for the environment than razing it with giant bulldozers. But milpa is not the backbone of our economy. Young people living in a western system, go to school at TCC, want the things of the modern world. Milpa can’t deliver cash to buy gas for SUV’s.

It is not to be ignored that an important part of the stand for communal land rights is about pace of development. A hurdle has been the mindset of certain Mayan leaders, seeming to want to right the wrongs of Columbus without consideration for other roots Belizeans who are victims of the same philistine.

In these negotiations, the minister has had to do some navigation to get us to where we are now. It was reported on the October 18 XTV newscast that the latest draft of the Maya Customary Land Tenure Policy had “been sent to relevant parties for review”, and that Minister Dolores said she “recognized that not everyone will be happy with the policy.” I couldn’t locate the remainder of that XTV news report, but I found a Channel 5 story which said the minister explained that government has been flexible and liberal in the handling of the matter. News5 said Dolores said parties had twisted government’s proposal, and that while the negotiations had at times been adversarial, “we view all of them as partners.”

Shyne’s power consolidation play thwarted

There’s a lot of two cents out there on this convention by a UDP faction on October 20. Before getting to mine – why I noh pleased with Shyne Barrow as leader of the opposition was not on the list of beefs that pushed Tracy and her faction to put on their red shirts.

This convention move by Tracy and friends is in the category of things you have to do. At the beginning of this saga, the majority of leaders in the UDP saw Shyne as a place-holder, until they could resolve their differences. If you go to the archives, you will see repeatedly where he said he wasn’t interested in the big job. You will also see where he said he “only” wanted the party to allow him to be leader until the next general election, which he and most of us expect the UDP to lose.

There’s a well-known game being played here by Mister Barrow. First, he didn’t want to be leader. We see how he has gripped the crown like a crab on a piece of coconut after his victory at Birds’ Isle. He only wanted to be leader until the general election, but while in the saddle he has borrowed from the pages of Animal Farm, where Napoleon ran his scheme to oust Snowball in order to consolidate his position. “Consolidating his position”, his second strike, is what led to his removal.

The way the machinery works in these parties is that the delegates choose the standard bearers and the party leader. The standard bearer doesn’t own the delegates, but as much as they can, they try to. It could be that the majority of standard bearers want a certain person to be party leader, but the majority of delegates want someone else.

There are a number of things put forward by Tracy’s crowd that are 100% legitimate. They charged that Shyne and his band had arbitrarily removed standard bearers, invalidated delegates, expelled members without due process, among other undemocratic activities. Shyne nakedly replaced duly elected/chosen standard bearers and delegates, with the justification that he was ridding the UDP of unsavory individuals. No bias should blind anyone from seeing that this road paved with “good intentions” also served to consolidate his grip on the party.

He was let through the door because he “only” wanted to remain leader until the next general election, which, if things hold as they are now, the UDP under any leader is expected to lose. You don’t have to know any math to know that on the path he was on, if he was left alone he would have owned the UDP, lock, stock, and barrel, until his teeth drop out if he wanted. Tracy and her faction knew that if they hesitated they would have to form a new party. They saw the game of the ambitious Brother Shyne; that’s why the reluctant Tracy turned tigress and went to the Civic Center and pressed the brake.

Pope Francis on the hot seat again

He’s soft on gays, though not as soft as Jimmy Carter who supports gay marriage; he has sat down with leaders of Islam like they were brothers; and he has told Israel to end its horrible war. This time, the charge against him is that he said, más o menos, that Abou Ben Adhem had a pathway to heaven. Nathan Beacom, in America – The Jesuit Review, said the Pope “created a stir with some off-the-cuff comments to an interreligious group of young people in Singapore, during his recent trip to Asia.” Beacom said the Pope said, “All religions are paths to God,” and he said, “I will use an analogy: they are like different languages that express the divine.”

Beacom said people are running away with “a snippet from some impromptu remarks”, and are suggesting that the Pope was saying “that all religions are equally true”, when his “point was that all religions are ways of communicating with God, not that they are all ‘the same’”.

Fair enough, America – The Jesuit Review, but I’m running with the story that almost 200 years after Leigh Hunt gave birth to Abou, the Pope gave his blessing.

They bash Pope Francis over his chair

I read somewhere that the Pope sits on a 30-million-dollar chair, while people and children are starving out here. If that chair gnawed at his soul so it was impossible for him to have peace of mind, I guess Pope Francis would resign. I would bet the house and lot that he cannot sell it. The Pope has some power, but he is no dictator at the Vatican. I understand that popes have even been killed for going against the decisions of the conclave. There is as much politics at the Vatican as there is in this upcoming US presidential election. Would you lose this great man over a chair? I emphatically say no!

One more week for Ms. Michelle?

Bah, we could lose Michelle Kwan if the Democrats get ousted next week. I’m not in those circles, but from here I can say it was very pleasing to have an absolute superstar like her as ambassador. She doant know that in the thousands Belizeans were rooting for her when she sailed across the ice in skates at the Winter Olympics.