by Colin Hyde

One core story behind this Senate Inquiry into that “Definitive Agreement” that Erwin (former Minister of Economic Development) signed for Portico, is that the Waterloo proposal of the Ashcroft group got the thumbs down from NEAC, and the proposal for the rival Portico that Erwin signed, was recommended by NEAC. We know the Ashcroft group threw vile accusations at NEAC, and was on their way to The Hague with their beef. Another core story is that the brother of Senator Herrera was the lead environmentalist for the Ashcroft group, and he was smarting after the project was condemned because of a proposal to dump some millions of cubic meters of silt between English Cay and Turneffe. Herrera, the environmental engineer, might have been a hero if he lived in Australia.

The agreement that Erwin signed just before the 2020 general elections, the present government picked it up after NEAC thought it could pass. If NEAC erred, it was not on its assessment that on the matter of the environment Portico was a far better project than Waterloo.

The Erwin agreement – of questionable legality, generous in concessions with an unrealistic exclusive zone – was dusted off by parties in the present government and sent to Cabinet. Apparently, somebody/bodies in Cabinet didn’t like the smell and broke Cabinet confidentiality, or the Cabinet room is bugged, or somebody’s tongue got loose over drinks and divulged what was meant for Cabinet only, for on Channel 7 News in the evening the matter became headline fodder.

Neither the UDP nor the PUP wanted this Senate Inquiry, the UDP because a number of its top people were involved in the making of a deal that some top leaders said they had not approved. The dissenting UDP said it hadn’t completed its due diligence on the project that Erwin agreed to. The PUP didn’t want any airing out of them discussing the agreement because it exposed an over eagerness on the part of some of its people, particularly the leader.

We know the UDP had difficulty boxing off Ashcroft and his wild ambition to berth the world’s most massive cruise ships at the Port of Belize. And we know that certain parties in the UDP facilitated the acquisition of properties by the rival Portico, or persons connected to Portico. The first part of this Senate Inquiry wanted to find out how Portico very quickly ended up with the land that it needed for the project, and how Portico got a minister to sign on just before the 2020 election.

I don’t know anyone who would say it was unfair to ask questions about those matters. It was proper, fundamental that people-who-received-pay-from-the-public-purse answered the simple questions that were put to them about the land transactions when they were before the Senate Inquiry last Tuesday. Incredibly, the two public servants chose to look unmanly before the Belizean people, or worse, like guys who had some terribly dishonest deeds to hide.

The mud from the Inquiry splattered far beyond the two men and the lawyer who advised them to answer nothing they weren’t compelled to. Governance in Belize took another massive hit. What can people who defend our democracy say now to counter people who cynically say that our political leaders and the public servants who serve them are corrupt, after these men brazenly went before the nation and essentially “testified” to the validity of these charges?

The request by the Senate Inquiry for the GoB to get “their” definitive agreement out of the shredder, and piece it back together, I don’t see the big deal with the refusal on grounds that Cabinet is confidential, because it is. The point by Senator Peyrefitte, that if he were boss he would make Cabinet business a public show, that’s the talk of a man who loves being seen. Mr. Peyrefitte lives to talk, and he thinks he can out-talk everybody, and he probably could. All that would happen if Cabinet meetings were public fare is that Cabinet members would do more lobbying outside of Cabinet meetings, and the actual meetings would be more formal.

The interest in piecing back together a Cabinet paper doesn’t amount to much more than an attempt to embarrass the PM. I have said that he very likely was eager to get Portico going after Waterloo hadn’t gotten the green light. All things being possible under the sun, it’s not impossible that he and some of his friends had some personal interest in the project. It’s not impossible that he liked seeing Ashcroft squirm, because Ashcroft had gone on his television station and questioned his toughness as a leader. One senior lawyer reportedly thought the agreement wouldn’t stand up in court if challenged, and one senior lawyer thought the case wasn’t cut and dried. The substantial point is that the agreement, or scheme, didn’t make it through Cabinet.

Maybe we deserve nothing from the Senate Inquiry, because it wasn’t conceived for the best intentions. Waterloo fanned up a certain section of the media, for its end to get at NEAC. Another reason why we got a Senate Inquiry was because an environmental engineer in the employ of Waterloo needed to justify his bad decision. That environmental engineer has a brother in the senate, and that brother was forced to recuse himself from a tribunal to review NEAC’s recommendation. That brother senator liked the idea of the Inquiry, Ms. Janelle is bait for anything involving the environment, and Senator Benguche and Senator Smith didn’t see any harm in going along.

Again, Portico’s environmental footprint is the lowest of the three

I have told you that I know this area well, well enough to tell you that I think if anybody knows it better than I do, they must be into nefarious things, because there is nothing there. Human beings don’t live in swamps. There is one place in our sea space that is less exciting than this area. On the coastline west of Cay Caulker and San Pedro there’s a mud flat that extends several miles. You won’t find any fish or conch or lobster there. But maybe the mud could be used to make ceramics.

Of the three large cruise proposals that were floating around these past two decades, hands down Portico is the least environmentally concerning. I’ve heard talk about how the project could affect the mouth of the Sibun a couple miles away, and beaches along the coast. There’s just a smattering of beach spots along the coast in this area. The sand that comes down the Sibun River, when it is in flood, is deposited at the mouth of the river. The men who worked on Radio, United, Mermaid, and Sophia can tell you about that. The silt from the river is deposited on the seabed.

There’s a legitimate concern that Portico’s pier, man-made island would impede manatees on the route between Gales Point and Swallow Cay, north of Belize City. I have seen manatees some miles east of the Portico site. But I can’t add anything else to that story.

The main proprietor of Stake Bank told Channel 7 that if Portico gets the go-ahead it would kill Stake Bank because there wouldn’t be enough cruise tourists for both. I don’t know enough about the cruise tourist throughput to comment on that.

Because we know about Gaza

A hardworking Israeli apologist has questioned our putting more interest in what Israel is doing to Gaza, than in other horrors around the globe, in Yemen, in parts of Africa, and Ukraine. The apologist said we give Egypt a pass for not accepting refugees from Gaza, when Poland and other neighbors of Ukraine take in their refugees.

One reason why we non-white peoples come out so strongly about what is going on in Palestine/Israel is because we know the story from the beginning, from when Abraham turned out Ishmael to this day. Absolutely no one has missed the story, because it is in the pages of the world’s most famous book, the Bible. We have history to everything that’s happening there. About the story there, almost all the nations of the world say this Israel is criminal.