Belize City, March 25, 2019– Belizeans are supposed to vote April 10, 2019 in a referendum on the question – “Do you agree that any legal claim of Guatemala against Belize relating to land and insular territories and to any maritime areas pertaining to these territories should be submitted to the International Court of Justice for final settlement and that it determine finally the boundaries of the respective territories and areas of the Parties?” YES or NO?
This is the most important decision that Belizeans will make in our short history as a nation-state. Why? Guatemala has, or is going to claim either all of Belize’s territory, or at least 53% of the country – from the Sibun River in the middle of the country to the Sarstoon River in the South, if a majority of Belizean citizens vote yes to submit the claim to the ICJ. According to lawyers from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this is the first time in the history of the Court that a neighbor has claimed all or over half of another country. In fact, in an article written last April 21, 2018 in the Economist, the writer said that the ICJ referendum sounds liked an “outrageous act of provocation”.
To understand what is happening one has to read the Special Agreement signed December 8, 2008 by Foreign Minister Hon. Wilfred Elrington of Belize and Hon. Rodas Melgar, Foreign Minister of Guatemala. Article 2 of this treaty states that the Parties request the Court to determine:
a. Any and all legal claims of Guatemala against Belize to land, and insular territories and to any maritime areas pertaining to these territories,
And
b. To declare the rights therein of both Parties,
c. To determine the boundaries between their respective territories and areas. (emphasis added)
Belize as a nation-state has a Constitution which is regarded as the Supreme Law of Belize. Section 1(2) and Schedule 1 of the Belize Constitution sets out the land and maritime boundaries of Belize. Only a two-thirds majority in the House (National Assembly) can change the boundaries of Belize. Belize was supported by the vast majority of the UN’s members to become a Sovereign Independent nation-state with all its territory intact in the year 1980 and several years later Guatemala recognized Belize as a sovereign nation-state. Belize and Guatemala have embassies in each other’s country. What this Special Agreement is proposing to do is to substitute the ICJ for the National Assembly of Belize and ask 15 foreign judges to determine the boundaries of Belize and Guatemala – to dispense with the 1859 treaty between Britain and Guatemala. And for your information, the Referendum Act of Belize 1999 requires that any settlement between Belize and Guatemala should first be put to the people of Belize in a referendum. And do you, the people of Belize, know that the wording of the Spanish version of Article 2 of the 2008 Special Agreement (Compromis) is different from the wording of the English version?
The Government of Belize seems not to trust the People of Belize. Instead, it is proposing that the People of Belize give a blank cheque to the 15 judges of the ICJ to decide a settlement of the Guatemalan claim to the entire or 53% of the current territory of Belize, including all those beautiful Cayes. WOW! What nerve.
What this whole ICJ Referendum has caused is severe division amongst our citizens. Today Belize is a divided country – split in two. Not by race or color or religion. No, the citizens of Belize are mostly divided between nationalists and cosmopolitan/neo-liberals and especially between the elites and the workers/lower-middle class. Between the one percent which own 70% of the assets of Belize and the 99% who only own 30%. The very rich don’t care if Guatemala gets the Toledo District or half of the country. Why? They will lose little and will export themselves to their mansions in Florida, New York City, and the Cayman Islands. The 99% have nowhere to go. The little house, the 10-acre farm – their entire life will disappear before their eyes.
Ask the people of India what the British did to them in 1947, or the people of Palestine, what the same British did to them. If you don’t know history, all Belizeans have seen recently the horrific news of the over 700,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh fleeing from Myanmar. Again the hand of the British is the cause of these problems of the Rohingya people. Under British rule, Myanmar was called Burma and Bangladesh was part of India. Instead of allowing a united and extremely powerful India, the imperial British divided India first into India and Pakistan, and in 1971 Pakistan was split in order to establish Bangladesh.
This year will make 38 years since Belize obtained its independence from the imperial power – Great Britain. In fact at the time of independence, the elite minority was opposed to independence. Over the last 37 years they have made sure that Belize’s independence was confined to political independence – financial and economic independence have never occurred and will never occur as long as the local elites continue to control Belize and work in the interest of the Anglo-Americans. Politicians need money, lots of money to win elections. Who pay for these expensive elections? The local elites pay. And we all know, who pays, governs.
Since 2016, using the methodology of Halcrow, poverty was estimated at about 60% of the population of Belize. In the year 2002 it was 33% of the population and reached 43% in 2009. In fact, in January 2016, the World Bank wrote, “Poverty levels in Belize are high and substantively above the average for Latin America and the Caribbean.” Over 85,000 of our employed work-force (56%) earn less than $700 per month or $175 per week. This, Belizeans, is a major cause of violence, poverty, frustration, low-health, and hatred of the elite currently in Belize.
With a population of some 400,000, Belize can easily pay some $ 2,000 per month in money-wages, and use the power of government to create each year some 10,000 new high money-wage jobs to eradicate poverty in Belize in about 15 years. But because we have allowed the local elites to control our economy and along with foreigners control our financial system, we have allowed them to put our economy on an unsustainable foundation. Imagine, for the year 2018, Belize’s trade deficit is $892 million dollars, nearly as much as our entire export earnings of $ 910 million dollars. This cannot continue – soon it will destroy the exchange rate peg with the US dollar. Raw agriculture for export and tourism have failed us. After 47 years they are breeding grounds for poverty, misery and despair. The majority of workers in today’s Belize are unskilled and mostly have a primary school education. Low money-wages in tourism and agriculture is the future of these unfortunate citizens of Belize.
If we like it, or not, only industrial manufacturing can pay workers $100 per day or $ 24,000 per year or more and remain economically competitive. Therefore if Belize wishes to eradicate poverty, it MUST become an industrial manufacturing nation-state to be able to pay high money-wages. And along with manufacturing industries must come the high tech modernization of agriculture. But we need to educate our workers up to at least a sixth form education for the new forth-wave manufacturing – automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Stop wasting time with business education. The future is science and engineering.
Our Prime Minister is fond of saying that his government’s hallmark is infrastructure. Millions of foreign loan funds have been spent on lots of pretty infrastructure projects, but poverty continues to grow. Why? Our decision makers forgot two main concepts. First, importing cement, asphalt, steel, bulldozers and other machines does not create innovation. In fact, only some 20% of the money spent on the project contributes to the local economy, as labor. The rest (80%) returns to the foreign imperial country to make themselves richer at Belize’s expense. If the money was created in Belize and we used Belize’s own materials and Belizean-made machinery, all the new wealth would remain in Belize to make Belize and its people richer. And second, non-challenging infrastructure does not create innovations in any economy. Modern high-tech agriculture and fourth-wave manufacturing can only work with a glue. The glue is infrastructure. As I wrote in my 1995 book on economics, “The building of new challenging infrastructure is how new methods of production are introduced into the economy to create productivity, which enables high money-wages to be paid without ruining an economy”.
To illustrate, an example just completed in September of last year is the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau 55-kilometer bridge-tunnel system consisting of a series of three cable-stayed bridges, an undersea tunnel, and four artificial islands. It is both the longest sea crossing and longest fixed link on Earth. It costed about USD $ 20 billion. China had to invent many items, including new stainless and other steel alloys for the bridges and tunnel. Over 1,665 patents were granted to Chinese companies and over 200 Chinese research institutions for the new production methods and materials invented to make this project happen. And where did this money (USD $ 20 billion) come from? It came from the State of China, using their sovereign credit. Simple. This, Belizeans, is how infrastructure causes a nation-state economy to innovate and be able to pay high-money wages to its citizens without ruining an economy.
And guess what, the same elites who have made sure that Belize has remained poor and backward are the same people who want our citizens to vote YES in the April 10th referendum so the ICJ judges can give away Belizean land and sea to Guatemala.
And they are supported by the churches, NGOs and others. Remember when the Church of Rome brought in a foreigner to instruct the local flock and made clear to the Roman Catholics in Belize that they are ruled from the Vatican in Rome – not by our local Bishop. And the Anglicans? They are ruled by their Head – the Crown – the Queen of England. The other Christians are mostly run by the American neo-cons. The churches in Belize are mostly foreign- controlled. The NGOs’ money come from the Anglo-Americans. Follow the money. It leads to the British and Americans.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say and believe that the destruction of Belize’s economy didn’t just happen by accident. There are no accidents of this sort on Planet Earth. This was made to happen by “the friends of Belize”. Why? To deliberately allow the Belizean people to become so wretched that they, like all lumpenproletariats, all scum of the Earth, all shirtless ones, all ‘harangatans’, become so desperate that they would sell their mothers. Add to this the cultural destruction, free Hollywood TV, and drug culture, and the “mindset” of the people become like putty to be molded into committing suicide by voting YES to the ICJ. Belizeans, do not ever forget that the “friends of Belize” will never forgive Belizeans for what the people of Belize did with the American lawyer, Bethuel Webster’s 1968 Proposals and the 1981 Heads of Agreement. Their memory is a thousand years long.
The British know they took advantage of the Guatemalans in 1859. They even offered money — 50,000 pounds sterling. But the British, being British, like to get things for free. For a mere $4 million that they are currently giving to fund the misguided YES campaign, they will save themselves from paying about one-half to one billion dollars which they owe Guatemala. Rt. Hon. George Price himself told me that Margaret Thatcher was angry with him because he refused to exchange Belizean land as a means of settling the Guatemalan claim. If the British can get Belize to give up some land they get away free. Belizeans, don’t let the British con or trick you. Remember their imperial history.
And the Americans? From about the year 1830, they have maintained that the British stole the land from the Sibun to Sarstoon from Guatemala. After the British gave back Nicaragua to the Nicaraguans and the Bay Islands to Honduras, the Americans supported the British settlement in Belize. Ever wonder why the British waited until 1862 to declare British Honduras a Crown Colony? But after the Cuban Revolution, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, it became standard for the US State Department to support Guatemala’s claim to Belize. The proof? Remember the Webster proposals? Ask the US Embassy in Belmopan why is there a mad rush to finance the YES vote and full United States support for Belize to go to the ICJ, while they have themselves refused to comply with rulings made by the ICJ against them. Just late last year, war monger-neo-con John R. Bolton had a lot of nasty things to say about the ICJ. And the local media? Most are busy selling themselves to the Anglo-Americans with a YES vote.
And then there are the cowards. The ones who are so afraid of Guatemala that they are willing to appease and give land and sea to Guatemala in order to hurriedly settle an outrageous claim. Belizeans, remember Belize is an Independent Nation-State. The only solution is political. No court can settle such a claim. In court someone wins and someone loses. As Madeleine Albright said at the UN, international disputes can only be satisfactorily settled by a win-win. Both must get something. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia – the interest of the other. Belize must defend itself. If Belize establishes a 9,000 defence force, well-trained and using the model of “arm the people”, we can take care of ourselves. But an economy with a 60% poverty rate and a trade deficit as large as the value of its exports can hardly support a 900-personnel-force. But if we turn our Belize into a manufacturing country following the examples of Alexander Hamilton, Abe Lincoln (and his economist, the greatest American, Henry Charles Carey), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, Belize can not only defend itself but end poverty and make our citizens happy as men and women made in the image of our Creator.
The YES crowd refuses to publically say that the Special Agreement was a clever Anglo-American ploy to let the judges at the ICJ give land and sea to Guatemala. (Read Article 1, 2 & 5) No local politician who wishes to remain alive would ever dare to give-up Belizean land and sea to Guatemala. So, instead let the local elites and their hangers-on give the power to the ICJ judges to give away Belizean land and sea. Most likely the Toledo district will become Guatemalan territory. Belizeans from that district will become refugees. Ask the Palestine people and the Indians, about being refugees. Toledo has much oil, gold, uranium, and most of all – rare earth, the stuff that makes your smart phone and other electronics. Belizeans should read Phil Butler’s recent article “Vladimir Putin as Mad Max and the Impending Oil Disaster” – https://m.journal-neo.org/2019/03/21 to understand why the United States wants the Toledo District so badly. Giving it to Guatemala is really giving it to the multi-national US oil majors and natural resources corporations.
Our destiny is to be the New Jerusalem in the heart of the Caribbean Basin. Only the People can save the People. Vote NO April 10th. Belize is for Belizeans! In fact, a NO vote to the ICJ will enable local politicians to finally stand-up to the elites and put Belize on the track to becoming a great industrial power.
Long Live A Free Prosperous Intact Belize!