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Ratholes or loopholes; when will any of them be plugged?

LettersRatholes or loopholes; when will any of them be plugged?

Dear Editor:

This letter is to all the citizens in Belize and particularly the eligible voters. It is pointless to continue to cry out for the corrupt politicians to be fined, charged, or jailed for any of the alleged wrongdoings that they are being accused of committing. The reason is simple; you cannot arrest and charge a person for something which you believe is a crime if there are no laws declaring that such a thing is a crime. A person has to break an established law [commit a crime] for the authorities to bring criminal charges against that individual.

So many things occur in Belize every day that people assume are illegal but, in fact, are not. Crimes committed in other parts of the world are punishable there, but in Belize these same crimes are not punishable because there are no such laws identifying these activities as illegal; a perpetrator can escape prosecution.

You cannot justify your bad behavior by pointing the finger at another person’s bad behavior because “two wrongs do not make a right.” The political parties and their supporters should not waste their time lambasting each other for crimes they allege the other did when they were in power. Energy and time would be better spent on how to remedy the situation. If a Party will not find solutions, it gives the impression that they support these loopholes in policies. Policies that when they become the government again, it will be business as usual, and they too can continue some of these same practices and also not be held accountable. It is one thing to talk about the wrong someone else is doing. It is quite something else to create solutions to address such wrong doings.

If neither of the political parties earnestly works to create and/or reform the laws of Belize, it matters little when the other party is elected to replace the current administration if the rat holes or loopholes in the current laws are not closed to prevent further abuses. Every election would be just an activity in which the voting public continues to “change monkey fi black dog” and experience the same bad behavior from its elected officials.

The “smart government in-waiting” (if one exists) should be developing real strategies that can realistically improve the quality of life for the Belizean people rather than recycling old mandates that sound good at political rallies. The “smart government in-waiting” should be diligently drafting legislation to bring our legal system into the 21st century so that the very day they are sworn into office they can present to parliament and the people of Belize their “fixes” to what ails the country.

The “smart government in-waiting” should be drafting legislation to present to parliament how they intend to halt the abuse of Ministerial powers, eliminate opportunities for misconduct, and assign substantive punishment for crimes. The “smart government in-waiting” should be able to prove to the citizens that they are serious in their commitment for better governance and transparency by the visible steps they take to punish wayward politicians who violate the public trust by creating new laws, reforming current laws and most importantly establishing that no citizen of Belize is above the law.

But the questions linger. How earnest is a government in their pursuit of good governance? Is a government sincere in delivering justice to its citizens for the actions of its corrupt politicians? Will there ever be real legal reform? Will governments continue with their non-existent/weak laws with no meaningful punishment, so that it will always be business as usual?

What do you think?
(Signed) K. Berry

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