Dear Editor,

In Belize, the political misconduct (now there’s an understatement!) of the previous (PUP) administration and the total lack of transparency inherent in the current gang of thieves (UDP), would seem to support the notion that voting for the lesser of two evils is really no choice at all.

When it comes to feeding at the public trough and using the National Treasury as their personal piggy bank, both of these oligarchies exhibit contempt for the people they govern and indifference to the fact that due to their shameless corruption Belize will never be part of the international community.

Whenever I rail against corruption in Belize, the first thing Belizians are apt to point out — probably because I’m an American — is how this is also true in the U.S. Fair enough, there’s certainly no shortage of political improprieties, ranging from the incomprehensibly baroque criminality found on Wall Street to the long and tawdry list with which we’re all familiar, comprised of bribery, racketeering, fraud, tax evasion and every form of malfeasance imaginable.

But while all this is true, one of the important differences between the U.S. and Belize is that in America they prosecute their corrupt politicians and send them to prison.

In Illinois alone, four of the last seven Governors (a State’s chief executive) were convicted and imprisoned for crimes ranging from the disappearance of municipal funds to back room deals with no other purpose than self-enrichment.

Sound familiar? You bet it does. And Illinois is just one example; governors, city mayors, lobbyists (a type of toady politician) and political underlings all over America are feeling the force of the law.

In any list of America’s most corrupt states, you will find that one thing they have in common is a lack of public access to information, i.e. governmental accountability. Surely, few would argue this isn’t a problem in Belize. Politicians in the U.S. are being taken to task as a result of investigative journalism, and as much as I respect the efforts at Amandala, I sense they are walking a rather fine line as to just how deep they can dig … maybe they are just being polite.

I wish nothing but the best for all Belizeans in their individual struggles, and for Amandala in THE struggle.

In 2008, President Obama said: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Russell Czarnecki
Mexico