Big congratulations to Mr. Gregory Ch’oc and the NGO community on his selection to sit in the Senate to defend the people’s interests from rapacious politicians. Ms. Joan Burke would have been a good choice too. She has distinguished herself with BERT (a health person), and she is well respected by Belizeans all over. Mr. Ernest Castro would have been a great choice also. The President of the National Garifuna Council is an outstanding career public servant (a finance man) who is well respected by all.
But Mr. Greg deserved the nod this time. Mr. Greg has not only distinguished himself in the fight for Mayan rights to ancestral lands in Toledo, he has done great work protecting the environment from overzealous developers; great work championing the rights of all marginalized Belizeans, of every ethnicity… AND great work championing the defense of our territorial integrity. Great choice, NGOs.
Hey, if the suggestion that the UDP is upset that the NGOs went ahead and selected their senator when it isn’t yet legal to do so is true…then dehn bogga betta check dehn self. Please, Mr. and Mrs. Reds, do not renege on a vital election promise. Please do not copy the bogus politics of the old PUP weh wi just kick out. The people voted for the enlightened Senate. No other initiative (which we didn’t vote for) should tie up the NGO senator in the courts.
And if the PUP goes to court to try and tie up the enlightened Senate (after we do the honorable thing and separate it from the other initiatives), deny us what we voted for, then the people wahn gih dehn moa sense. Give the enlightened Senate every chance to work. If the enlightened Senate fails, then we will vote in 2013 for the PUP version…or the We the People version…or the Senate of the Three Wise Men.
By the way, big up to all the churches, and their senator. I still believe that producers (farmers, fishermen, business persons involved in value added) should get that Senate seat…but Senator Henry Gordon, the choice of the ones who got the nod by the UDP, is doing a great job. With the NGOs taking their responsibility seriously, braa, other nations across the globe will be coming here to study our model democracy.
It is a matter of trust
There are a few people in Belize who believe that Father of the Nation, RH George Price, was selling out Belize to Guatemala in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Wa, a governor once accused Mr. Price of trying to sell us out lock, stock, and barrel. The matter even went to court. The way I understand it, the colonial masters set out to prove that Mr. Price and the PUP had made unholy contact with the Guatemalans. When it came time for the Belizean people to decide, at the polls, they said contact or no contact, Mr. Price was their man.
Many of those skeptics who never trusted Mr. Price believed that the real about him was that he was too accommodating. To see Belize independent was Mr. Price’s dream, and he was ready to negotiate…a little here, a little there, to get the British to relinquish the reins.
Life is strange. The man the PUP called an Anglophile, Hero Philip Goldson, led the charge against the British when they designed wicked schemes (called Webster’s Proposals, and Heads of Agreement) that would have handed us over to the enemy…yes, lock, stock, and barrel.
RH Price is off the political scene now, but his point man, Mr. Assad Shoman, who was a lawyer for the government when Mr. George brought back the Heads of Agreement from London, is still one of Belize’s key people in our efforts to resolve the old dispute. Not everyone is pleased that Mr. Shoman is still one of the lead negotiators for Belize. The present government knows that, so in a press conference last week new PM Dean Barrow patted the air…told us to rest easy, to be assured that no sell out is on the table…because Mr. Dylan Vernon and Mrs. Gilda Lewis are also on our team.
Braa, does Mr. Shoman get the sense…that he makes us very nervous?
Maybe we are being unfair. Maybe it is because of lying all those years with British prescribed secret dealings (17 Proposals; and the Heads; and the Maritime Areas Act (not all bad, but why did they have to move our sea border in the south to within eyesight of PG?)) that we think he have flea. Maybe that is why we noh trust Assad with our lee square centimeters.
I think maybe it is the age old story…another great man not knowing when his time is past. Mr. Shoman did solid work in the seventies when he, along with former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Carl Lindbergh Rogers, won the international community to our side. Then he got tangled with the Heads and lost his credibility in that arena. Brother Shoman should have accepted our gratitude in 1981, and given us back our saddle. With him high profiling on the defense team we’ll be checking the paper the question for the ICJ is printed on…for invisible ink.
The Society for the Promotion of Education and Research (SPEAR) was a solid initiative by Mr. Shoman. The Thirteen Chapters was a solid initiative too, except that he didn’t hand it over to an honest editor to purge that thing of rampant PUP bias.
Sometimes it’s about the money. Sometimes it is about the glory. Few men can walk away when their hour upon the stage is over. Then, puff.
P.S. The biggest Red on the negotiating team is Ambassador Fred Martinez. But he has been so quiet one hardly knows he is there. After being in the tub with Mr. Assad and Mr. Eamon (son of VH, the other lawyer for the Heads) so long, and being so quiet, lat a people think Ambassador Fred as saaf as PUP when ih kom to fu we land and the greedy neighbor.