Label me gullible, but I really thought Wave’s Joe Bradley was on to something, a scoop to blow the Belize Peace Movement out of the water, when he told his co-host Alfonso that he had seen a certain young lady lawyer from Nigeria, preaching in a church in Belize. Belize has a growing Nigerian population, and we definitely wouldn’t put it past Mr. Brackett, “the tire burner in front of the Guat Embassy,” to pull one to put a brake on Sedi and Assad and all their company.

You’ve seen the lady in the video, the one where she gives a warning to Belizeans about the ICJ. It seems that just about everybody in Nigeria is fed up with that court after it decided in favor of Cameroon in a case between them.

In Belize, we never tell lies on or about ladies, so I must be excused for swallowing everything Joe threw up on Wave to break the case wide open. I thought he couldn’t possibly be lying because one, the aforementioned point about how nicely we treat the lady folk in Belize, and two, it would be some serious vomit-swallowing if it were proven that the lady does not put in some work on a pulpit in a church on Antelope Street in Belize City.

Brackett and company have full license over at Plus TV, so if there was going to be a rebuttal to Joe, I expected it to come from there. Instead, the rebuttal came from Joe’s very own sister media, the UDP newspaper, the local Guardian. I can’t believe the local Guardian did not even offer up an excuse for Joe when they blew his church accusation sky high. The local Guardian did not even allow for a hint of a possibility that the tape was done here, in a local church.

I must commend the local Guardian for the respectful way it handled the matter. We wouldn’t want our local Nigerians to feel unloved because of any disagreement about political viewpoints. The local Guardian did a thorough research, unlike the radio host, and found the lady on facebook. It did not rule out that the lady might indeed be a lawyer, but it said that no mention was made of such status on the lady’s page.

Personally, I think the lady is very smart to hide her identity, the lawyer part, on her facebook page. She might be single, and being a lawyer definitely won’t help if she has any interest in gaining friends from the opposite side. Can you imagine the amount of arguing a man would have to do if he had a lawyer for a lady friend? My, every step he takes, every move he makes, she’d be interrogating him about it.

I think it’s great going for Ms. Jayne Anakapo, very intelligent of her to keep the big credentials out of the facebook identity. That shows she has a sound head on her shoulders about her personal matters. Now, as per political matters, the exposé she did on the video for her friend, Mr. Brackett, I don’t agree with her at all. I respect her opinion, and that of Mr. Brackett too, but I noh agree.

Micah was respectful, restrained

I got a full listen to the exchange between Councilor Goodin and the City Administrator (Belize City Council), when they played the audio on Channels Seven and Five, and I don’t agree that he was out of control or disrespectful. I think the City Council Mayor had to do what he did, relieve him of some duties, but this was just one of those things. Things happen, and the substance and optics sometimes call for redress.

The Belize City Council is star-studded, and that includes the Mayor and his Deputy. It is not often that persons with banking talent have the “common touch”, conscience, but the Mayor and his Deputy have the goods.

We’ve seen how far the gift of gab can take a person in politics, and where that goes I think the Mayor doesn’t have all the smooths. In the world of words the Mayor is nowhere near as bad as Donald Trump, but he does trip up sometimes. But he has an immense resume of community work, pro bono stuff, just for the love of the people, and you can feel the sincerity and dedication oozing from his pores.

I say that Mr. Micah Goodin wasn’t really disrespectful, that he was restrained because the circumstances allowed for a far bigger blow-up than what I heard. I’m pretty sure the fact that the City Administrator, the person he quarreled with, is a lady, forced him to keep down the temperature.

Accountants/bookkeepers, which is the stuff that City Administrators are made of, the stuff at their core, are an essential part of the capitalist system. If there are no they, there is no system. They perform an essential job that calls for considerable meanness. Some of us don’t understand them, some of us never will.

I think the Mayor said it all to Channel Seven: “The council’s accounting procedures require certain requirements to be met prior to funds disbursement. So while these budgets were approved, it was not anticipated that funds were required for immediate disbursement on Wednesday morning — as was demanded for the interoffice football team. This is what was explained to staff within the councilor’s portfolio. However this was interpreted as an unwillingness to disburse the funds, which led to Councilor Goodin’s outburst with our city administrator.”

I’ve been where you were, Mr. Goodin, and in one instance I ended up getting fired or, to be perfectly truthful, firing myself. I was, yes, more constrained than you were. But the person I was at odds with was my direct superior, and also well-liked by me.

At my first real employment, I was, as one would expect, very young, even younger than Micah. Three times I went crossway with the system where I worked, or the system crossed me up, and the third time I ended up walking off the job. At the time I walked off the job I thought it was the right thing, the honorable thing. But when I matured some I realized that I let down.

We had a big, new job at the farm and I explained to my boss that we could make considerable savings for the farm if he allowed my workers to do the job. I told him what I needed, and he thought it over and gave in to all I asked for. The job had to be carried out every ten days and a part of the agreement was that my workers would make double pay whenever they did the job, and they would get triple pay when they went overtime, which they would.

All went along smoothly for four or five cycles, when I got reeled in to the office of the Farm Accountant, the equivalent of Micah’s City Administrator. The Farm Accountant told me that I had to make some adjustments because my workers, the ones on the special assignment, were making more than the clerk in his office, and that wouldn’t work. He said the entire pay structure for farm workers was threatened.

The workers on the special assignment already had a higher hourly rate than regular day workers on the farm. Contract workers could “tayr up”, but they were tolerable because contracts usually didn’t last very wrong. I was on very good terms with my boss, and with the farm’s accountants, but that instruction you couldn’t spell any other way but impasse.

I said that later on in my life I realized that I should have stayed and “fought the good fight” for my workers. Maybe I could have won them some other plum, as payment for the demanded pay cut. Well, I told the accountant, no go. Then I went to my boss and gave him the same message.

I said I’d been in turbulent waters before, the latest one being my boss’s refusal to give some of my workers an increase for a certain job. He called in the Farm Accountant and I got crushed.

Impasse means no quarter. My boss told me that I had to yield and I told him I was unhappy and he said he didn’t want any unhappy people on his farm. He had advised me on an occasion that I needed some responsibility in my life. At that time I was a pizote solo, a single quash, so I told him goodbye and I got my rubber boots and I went to the highway and hitchhiked home.

You are not alone in this, Mr. Goodin. Many have been crushed by that accountant class and many more will get their hopes dashed. It’s the way of the people who guard the money. They have their systems and they have their toughness. I guess if they don’t have that they don’t have a job. I think the Mayor has already explained, so the people you lead shouldn’t pressure you for your inability to deliver for them right away.

I believe I have the experience to empathize with Mr. Goodin on this. It hurts like hell, personal ego included, when you fail to deliver the goods for your workers/followers. When you get a little older you realize that it’s really not about you. To my mind, Micah was a little rough, but not disrespectful. I completely ignore the gender aspect because this modern world is a little different from the one I grew up in. But even so, he was mindful.

I say, swallow hard. Stay the course. Your Mayor promised the funds will come from the limited resources of the Council. You just have to wait until the accountant releases it. They, and the lawyers, absolutely run this world.