But he was an unelected Senator at the time. Today, he is absolutely entrenched, and the telecommunications deal Mr. Fonseca made last week with Jeffrey Prosser, after months of having led the nation of Belize into a chokehold by Lord Michael Ashcroft, is one which showcased the fact that our Belizean taxpayers? moneys are Mr. Fonseca?s to do with as he may.

Mr. Fonseca?s 10 collective years as Minister of Finance have exposed the fact that he does not believe in democratic, competitive capitalism. That is a messy capitalism. He prefers the tidiness of de facto monopolies. Despite his lip service to the dynamism of the marketplace, there are out-of-control giants that his government has facilitated during his three different terms as Finance Minister. One of these is the aforementioned Ashcroft. Another is the ill-fated Novelo?s bus group. And the latest will be Jeffrey Prosser, it does appear.

We would like for the public finances of Belize to be handled, as of the now, in a legal and traditional manner. The moneys involved in all of Mr. Fonseca?s deals are not his, but ours. We taxpayers are not gamblers on Wall Street. We are cowardly little workers who are not sophisticated money managers. We believe that when we put a dollar in the treasury, we should be able to get a dollar every time, any time we choose to return to the treasury. We find it hard to breathe the rarefied air of derivatives and the other modern financial ?deals.? By and large, we want to return to the old way ? the Rafael Fonseca way, the Edney Cain way.

These deals, these transactions must be presented to Cabinet for their approval before the fact. Cabinet Ministers are the elected representatives of the people of Belize. We, the people, hold them responsible. This is fundamental. Cabinet should never be a rubber stamp for anyone. This is the way we understand the Constitution of Belize to be written where the handling of public finances is concerned.

Even if it were the case that all of the Hon. Fonseca?s deals worked brilliantly and enriched the taxpayers of Belize immensely, the present situation would still not be a desirable one, the reason being that the nation would be at the mercy of one man. If anything happened to him, no one would be able to figure out all the myriad, maze-like details of his operations. But the fact of the matter is that the masses of taxpayers are not being enriched. And we have now experienced the absolute takeover of all our vital public utilities ? water, electricity and telecommunications, by European foreigners. Mr. Fonseca calls it privatization, but to the older masses of the Belizean people, it has come to look like a different form of the colonialism we began fighting in 1950.

The proof of the Jeffrey Prosser pudding will be in the telephone rates. If the rates rise, then we will know that we, the people, were sold down the river so that Mr. Fonseca?s reputation could be protected. The weeks when Carlisle legally held the BTL shares after having banked US$57 million, money which we, the nation of Belize, borrowed from International Bank of Miami and were paying interest upon, will go down in history like the four days in late October of 1998 before the monster Keith finally decided to go south to Honduras. We held our collective breaths in Belize during those weeks. What had Ralph wrought? It turns out he had ?wrought? Prosser.

There is a pessimism in the streets about this one, a pessimism born of a cynicism which has become widespread. Mr. Fonseca has been talking too fast for most of us. He has to slow it down so that we beasts of burden can understand the bills we have to pay. If he is unable to control his supersonic behaviour, well then, constitutionally speaking, we just have to hold on as tight as we can, and pray.

Those representatives we have elected who have been named to Cabinet, seem unable to do anything themselves. Every now and then they themselves have to go traipsing, cap in hand, into Mr. Fonseca?s office to assure the receipt of the moneys publicly budgeted to their Ministries. They tell us they can?t do anything about the present state of affairs because the Minister of Finance functions with the blessing of the Prime Minister.

Well, we, the newspaper, can do nothing except to say what we believe the people of Belize are thinking. Mr. Fonseca is certainly a man of extraordinary abilities. One wonders why he is not in the private sector, where no holds are barred. But he is, in the private sector, that is, except that the dice he rolls are backed by public moneys. This is the rub.

If you have to feel trepidation about discussing your own money with a man, then you are in bad shape. It means your money is, for all intents and purposes, his money. And that means you have no rights, and power to the people then becomes a masquerade.

We could not end this editorial without pointing out that the credibility of the Opposition UDP continues to be undermined by their chronic coddling of Lord Ashcroft. This was the same coddling that cost them the 2003 elections, and it is this coddling which dictated that their predictable response to the Jeffrey Prosser deal would be an elaborate press conference (Monday afternoon), hysterical outbursts on their radio station, and then the self-righteous posturing in their weekend newspaper, and nothing more.

On a whole, we consider the PUP to be our friends. They have been cordial to us where the UDP have been hostile. But we are not owned by the PUP. The strength of our business is the street support of the people who buy our newspapers. We respect government policy, but we cannot extol it where we believe better could have been done for the people of Belize. That?s the bottom line. Better could have been done.