Last week, for the first time that I can remember, the newspaper of the ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) contained more pages than the newspaper issue of Belize’s leading publication – Amandala.

Those of us in the business, and I suspect most reading Belizeans, know that the UDP newspaper has no readership. The reason for its large size last week, and all holiday weekends, is the fact that all Cabinet Ministries and statutory bodies are enjoined by party loyalty/pressure to send whole page advertisements to the party’s propaganda organ.

But the monies which pay for those ads are the tax monies of us Belizeans, across all party, religious, and other lines. You don’t have to understand economics at university level to appreciate that this type of attitude on the part of the Barrow administration, essentially contributes to the different situations where we in the private sector are being crushed by a bloated, inefficient public sector. The readership of our newspaper, the Belizean public in other words, is not as important as the party hacks.

According to the PM in his Independence Day speech, unemployment in Belize is at an all-time low. Do not believe it. There is an economic crisis in Belize. The PM was telling an untruth. Straight up.