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In it for the long haul

FeaturesIn it for the long haul
No, I wasn’t there for the first COLA march last Wednesday. The only reason for my absence was that 3rd term and yearly grades were due that day, and for the first time in my formal teaching career, which has ended now, I was really desperately behind, in part because I was sick as a dog that previous weekend. I have too much pride to go out on any level that would allow students and administration to question my dedication.
 
But anybody who doubts my commitment to the cause of COLA needs to realize that I have been there all my life. I started talking publicly about the level of corruption in Belize from 1993. Nobody wanted to hear that back then. Why?
 
Because life hadn’t yet become economically desperate enough to make large numbers of Belizeans question the status quo. How times have changed!
 
One of the more enervating things about the Lord is his arrogance. I have only met the man once, when he sat quietly at a table at the Radisson while Mango Jam was performing. He didn’t speak to me, only to my wife to compliment her on her singing. He seemed so unassuming and so alone.
 
Understand that I’m not trying to create any sympathy for the man. The lives that are destroyed by those who manipulate and take gargantuan shares of resources for their own personal benefit, precludes that. Remember the names he gives to his companies, like “Pillow Talk?” Although the new PUP leader, Johnny Briceno is apparently close to Amalia Mai, and that is its own separate big, and I mean BIG can of worms, I can’t help feeling that her appointment as the CEO of Channel 5 is partly the man’s way of throwing it back in our faces: “she participated in a massive diversion of funds that hurt the most helpless among us and see, none of you bleeding hearts can do anything about it!”
 
Well, we’ll see about that. The Belize that was, is no more. Serious trouble has a funny way of creating alliances among people who nobody would have ever thought would be on the same page, let alone the same side! What’s that old proverb? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” It’s very possible that Michael Ashcroft, as powerful as he is because of his immense fortune, may just have overstepped this time. Eventually, success combined with arrogance can trip up anyone, no matter how invincible they think they are. Machiavelli preached “divide and conquer.” What happens when a threat is perceived to be so great that people put aside their differences to unite, because it becomes a matter of mutual survival?
 
Read foreign magazines such as the “Economist,” and Belize is identified as “the poorest country in Central America.” First of all, that’s simply not true. Belize has a small population and with the tapping of oil reserves, there is enough revenue to allow the majority of its population to live well. Belize has been kept poor by foreign predators working in an alliance with corrupt Belizean politicians! It’s a tried and true formula for disaster that has been repeated over and over in the Caribbean, in Africa and in Asia. No wonder the colonial powers eventually agreed to independence for former colonies. Why fight costly and debilitating wars to keep physical control of their former colonies? They already knew that “independence” was just a twelve letter word because they had their strategy all worked out!
 
There will be no change in the man’s approach. He was tossing so much money around the Conservative (Tory) Party in England that the Party Leader started complaining that the man’s staff as the Party Treasurer was larger than his own as Party Leader. And, the man apparently, still has not kept the promise he made in return for being granted his peerage – that he would keep his domicile in England and pay his fair share of taxes. He seems to have a big time aversion to paying taxes anywhere. No matter! Cash is awfully hard to resist! And, when you are buying your way, pay more. That’s what the man did to the small shareholders of BTL. No doubt the majority of them had looked at their shares as a nest egg for retirement and when they were pitched like this, “I’m paying more than market value, so take it now because if you refuse, I have many ways of diluting the value of your shares and you will get left with little or nothing,” they felt that they had no choice. They didn’t!
 
Some of the key players in Wednesday’s march have taken Ashcroft money in the past. Right now, they perceive the man as a threat to our survival. The key words here, “right now.” What happens when the ante is upped? KREM will fight, that’s sure. So, pick off the easy marks first. That’s what Channel 5 was, an easy mark. No doubt the former owner feels that he has been a good businessman because he has profited well. I wonder how he feels when he sees Belizeans living in squalor and dying of hunger. Remember Kimara Rodriguez, the little 5-year-old girl from Orange Walk who died of starvation? I do! I hope she haunts his dreams at night, though I doubt it! When he faces the Most High on his judgment day, you bet that he will be reminded! Maybe he believes that there is no God. I feel a bit sorry for him, not too much, but a bit!
 
This is why we’re in it for the long haul. That’s what it’s going to take. If you don’t have the balls for that, step out now and save yourself and the rest of us a whole lot of wasted time. Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s where it’s at! Besides, when thinking about it, the hell I’m sorry! I’m not! Deal with it!
 
I admit that I was a bit hesitant to write the preceding paragraph. I’m 60, my wife is 57, and we have health issues to deal with. Then again, my wife is a decorator, designer, artist and world class jazz and R & B singer. I play several instruments – saxophones, keyboards, violin and viola. We have given up many years to try to be there for our children. Both of us have often said, ironically, that if people realized what kind of sacrifices raising children requires, this world wouldn’t have a population problem! We are committed to our music and other artistic endeavors, but that doesn’t mean that I give up a commitment to a country that in many ways has been good to us. There is no perfect place to live in this world. What we have to do is to make the most of our opportunities and the gifts that Jehovah, by giving us life, makes possible.
 
Besides, I have to fight for Kremandala. I have been doing the Sunday morning jazz program on KREM since the year 2000. That makes 8 years! I have also been writing a weekly column for Amandala since 2005. There is no other media house in Belize that would allow me the freedom to work without any interference whatsoever! ‘Nuff respect!

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