by Colin Hyde
Both Channel 7’s proprietor, Jules Vasquez, and former leader of the UDP and PM, Dean Barrow, have pointed to an ads assault by the Ashcroft Group as the reason behind GoB’s purchase of PBL. The story is that the GoB had to buy PBL at the seller’s price to get the assault to stop, for while it continued there was serious erosion of the governing party’s popularity. Vasquez described it as “an unprecedented flood of negative advertising”, and said the “60 ads in three and a half months” were “spearheaded and sponsored by not the UDP, but by the Ashcroft Alliance.”
D. Barrow told Amandala that sources told him that Ashcroft indicated to GoB that the ads were “previews of coming attractions.” Barrow said that Belize got had. He said it wasn’t his sense that GoB “did any thoroughgoing check with respect to the figures”, that it seems to him GoB “simply accepted what the Ashcroft Group put forward in terms of revenues.” D. Barrow said the port is in “horrible condition”, and that perhaps we will need to invest tens of millions to upgrade it.
The ads in question were mostly aimed at GoB’s interest in Portico, a cruise port that is proposed to be built at a site a couple or 3 miles south of the mouth of the Sibun River. The ads charged that the Portico port proposal is loaded with gifts for certain high-ranking PUPs.
The Ashcroft Group, in this instance also known as Waterloo, was backing a cruise port proposed for another site. When that project did not receive environmental clearance, the spurned Waterloo cried foul and, apart from various lawsuits, vented its pain in the production of the ads, which received the eager participation of the main opposition, the UDP. The ads aired day and night on the Ashcroft Group’s television station, Channel 5, and on Channel 7, which, considering their cut, might have been as happy as the UDP to oblige.
High-ups in the UDP are claiming that an agreement between Portico and a UDP government was signed by a renegade UDP minister acting under some kind of head tek. Another UDP minister reportedly facilitated the acquisition of lands critical to the project. The smell on the present government comes from a leak which revealed that the present PM had made an effort to get his Cabinet to give the green light to Portico, even though one of two legal inquiries into the validity of the agreement signed by the purported renegade minister, had yielded a declaration that it was a boat without a sail.
The lawyer who declared the Portico agreement invalid is highly rated, so tops that he is representing us at The Hague. But this matter is very different from the matter at The Hague. Another topnotch lawyer declared that the agreement might not be insubstantial. Catch 22—either way there was risk that the government would get tied up in litigation. Hold your nose: the same UDP parties who said the agreement was illegally gotten, they led us to court, and the banging we took is in the hundreds of millions. Boy, the Belizean people have been battered in the courts since 2008. Our losses are enormous.
Staying generous with the PM and his government, there is another legitimate factor that must have influenced them to run with it. The cruise port proposal by Waterloo had been declared environmentally risky, unsustainable. That deal shouldn’t have flown, and it didn’t fly. When it went down, it took hundreds of jobs and millions of foreign investment dollars with it. The PM and his government must have been influenced by the prospects of hundreds of jobs and millions of foreign investment dollars pouring in to replace the dead-in-the-water Waterloo.
The ads didn’t have to be true for them to harm the government’s image. You can be an innocent bystander and someone with no credibility at all says a bad word about you, and you will have to defend your good name. I bet you heard about a certain TD Jakes who has become a multi-millionaire because he hollers “Lord, Lord” convincingly, how he has been accused of being around sex parties of the rap star Combs. Skipping by the smear, I’ll just say this Jakes pops up from time to time in the media. I am not aware that he spreads his dough, but I am aware that he has dropped a few word pearls from the pulpit.
As noted in this column a couple times, some experts had tagged the site a couple or three miles south of the mouth of the Sibun as the best place to land ships in Belize. While the developer might not have the finances to see his dream through, inevitably, if the experts were sound, a cruise port will be built a couple or three miles south of the Sibun. Those who fret that cargo could go to the Sibun can rest easy. The GoB purchase of PBL means that ain’t going to happen.
Returning to those on charge, if the purchase of PBL was bad for Belize, and government for the people was driven into it by Ashcroft ads on Channel 7 that featured known UDP operatives, I don’t see how 7 and the UDP come off unscathed. Being willing vessels for the Ashcroft Group to satisfy their selfish end, an end which translates to the poor people’s money being wasted again, no, that noh beautiful.
Did the UDP operatives who performed in these ads have any evidence that they were truthful? Did Channel 7 believe it fair to air the grief of Waterloo? Our country is in a space where if it isn’t libelous, it is good. And even if it is libelous, no one sues Ashcroft because he owns half the banking system and all the best lawyers. Of course, political leaders shouldn’t get into suing anyway. They need to cultivate integrity so that their words have weight.
Is an ad just an ad? The answer to that is no. Yes, the television station and the party will claim that they were about saving us from a pension plan for the big PUP boys. Well then, they marched into hell, and a lot of lucre, for a heavenly cause. But their zeal also forced our government into a bad decision. Bah, they might claim to have had the nation’s good at heart, but their good intentions led us straight to another mighty wapping by the Ashcroft crowd. My, my, it might have been better for the boys to get their little pension.
Whoa there, I do not say that the PBL was financially a bad buy. I am yet to put the numbers under my microscope. I am saying that if it was, hmm, the guilt isn’t the government’s alone.
What, Amalia was rough on Brother Eamon?
I think it was that pundit with a nose for trouble, Jules Vasquez, who ran this story that Eamon couldn’t get away from the Immigration Department fast enough because ih mi di get bully reg by Amalia. Ai, you see why many are wary of women in leadership positions. Most everyone said Eamon was doing a good job. But the hardworking brother couldn’t get out fast enough. I say, all those who are sticking needles into Eamon, they instead should be feeling sorry for him, for being p-whipped for 3 years, and happy for him that he is out of there.
My, to think we had all thought that Ms. Amalia had become a changed person after Ashcroft brought her over to Channel Five. For all her years there, not once did that station produce or broadcast a show that the late Queen E would have said was rated. Now she is back in the bosom of the PUP, it appears she is back to her bad old ways. Ouch, anyone remember how many lawsuits and threats of lawsuits the UDP brought against the Belize Times and Ms. Amalia when she was boss there? I tell you, the answer to that is plenty.