From the luxury of my vantage point as an impartial, non-party citizen, I have to say that Prime Minister Barrow has my full support in his bold and righteous stand against the secret deals purportedly made in the name of the Belizean people by the past Prime Minister. But I have to say that I don’t think the UDP government has had a rosy first year in office, and it’s not all the Prime Minister’s fault. His team is weak, and there is probably a reason for that.
The chosen ones
As a team, the UDP did not really earn their victory in the last general elections. They didn’t have to prove themselves to be a good team to win. They won by default. Belizean voters across the country decided that “da crowd haf to go”. Because of the party political machinery in our electoral system, the UDP was the only credible alternative to the old corrupt PUP. They did not “score any goals” to win the game: they were just given the victory because we had no other choice.
If a viable third party had been on the scene, things might have been very interesting. But that would not be; that was not allowed to be. Derek Aikman’s mysterious kidnapping in 2007 put a stop to that developing process that might have ended up with an amalgamation of the “third forces” into a viable political party to compete against both the PUP and the UDP in the 2008 general elections. Perhaps the big financiers of both the PUP and the UDP didn’t want to have to also spend on another party. Perhaps they feared their money would not have been accepted.
Unanswered questions
Incidentally, Derek Aikman was kidnapped at the time when the Telemedia Bill was before the House of Representatives, and his kidnappers reportedly made certain demands in connection with the passing of the Telemedia Bill in the Senate. Sensational! “Detective 101” says that that ties the kidnapping to the Telemedia interests. But no Police investigation ever found who were the kidnappers, or what interest the kidnappers had in the Telemedia Bill. (Amazingly, at that time, even some UDP stalwarts maintained that the Aikman kidnapping was all a hoax.)
Is it now strange to hear long held suspicions confirmed that, indeed, there are corrupt police officers who are involved in “hits”? Is it a very far cry from murder to kidnapping? Did a number of citizens not suspect some level of “official” involvement when nobody was ever held or charged for that kidnapping? Does anyone smell the possibility of a conspiracy anywhere? The past PUP government understandably wouldn’t. But will the new UDP government now initiate a Commission of Inquiry into that dramatic and historic unsolved kidnapping? That should be a good start if we are really interested in weeding out the “rogue cops” in high and low places from our Police Force.
Thurs. Mar. 26, 2009
From “sensational” to “frightening”
A caller on Wave Radio this morning, claiming to be a presently serving 17-year veteran of the Police Force, said he is thinking about resigning his post. The caller commented on some extremely serious allegations about Police falsification of reports in the case of the recent Chinese businessman “hit”. His allegations are that the order came from high up in the department, and the junior officer would be punished and then later rewarded “under cover”.
On learning of the report, Positive Vibes radio host Glenn Tillett remarked on his show that, over all the years that he has been observing and involved with politics, this is the first time that he is positively “frightened” by the state of affairs in our country, as it relates to corruption amongst the guardians of the public, our Police Force.
Belizeans across the country may not all be frightened. Many are not informed enough to realize the implications of these recent revelations. But none of us are safe, when the men who do the investigations may be the same ones carrying out the orders to “waste” us.
Dropping the ball
There have been a number of situations already in this first year of the UDP government, where it seems the Prime Minister has had to step in to situations, and he probably should have stepped into others, that were mishandled by his Ministers or Area Representatives. And it is because his team is weak. Security is certainly one area that is weak, but there are others.
Part 2
Wed. Mar. 25, 2009
Security?
For heaven’s sake. If our Security Force was performing as it should, we would not be in a position today where citizens across the country have called for a “commission of inquiry” into the incident in Orange Walk that led to one man killed. Actually, Security has also fallen down on our border situation, which is as much or even more a Security matter than Foreign Affairs. And the evidence of major corruption within the Police Department is only getting greater and greater, with no visible effort or action from up top to make the drastic changes needed to turn the tide.
The same hand-picked Commissioner under the past corrupt PUP administration is still the Commissioner, even though he had publicly refused to carry out an arrest order by the DPP. The DPP can only act on files sent to him/her from the Police, and if there is gross incompetence and/or corruption in that department, then how can the DPP ever be expected to get the job done? Ergo, nolle prosequi.
The latest scandal involving an alleged “hit” (murder by hired killer), where the alleged businessman who hired the hit man is allowed to walk free as an “informant”, while the alleged hit man and the alleged go-between are both arrested, only shows how far the corruption has gone. It is outrageous! The DPP can’t arrest any “untouchable” if the Police don’t provide the necessary “goods” on the person. The present ComPol refused to arrest a former “sacred cow”, and now the DPP can’t seem to make an arrest on another. And where is the Minister in charge of the Police? Silence.
Foreign Affairs has been a disaster for the Belizean people, who were promised one thing – to see the so-called compromis once the Guatemalan Cabinet had approved it, only to then have to wait a few more days, until our Foreign Minister went to Miami to SIGN on our behalf a whole document, the “special agreement”, that has effectively pushed our whole nation into a diplomatic corner that will require all our “Hanaasi” wit to get out of.
This same Ministry has completely fallen down on border patrols – saying one thing and doing the complete opposite. The Minister claimed to be patrolling the border 24 hours a day, but the evidence is to quite the contrary. And the swarms of illegals not only have had a free hand in the so-called “adjacency zone”, but once inside Belize, they quickly join the work force for slave wages, putting our local unemployed “out of competition” for the few jobs available, or add to the escalating crime problem. Foreign Affairs is a disaster, and the Prime Minister has tried to salve the wounds, by declaring that he doesn’t expect the ICJ matter will ever get to the referendum stage.
Agriculture? A full blown crisis in the North caused the Prime Minister to have to intervene in a situation that had no real winners. True, a leader has to be knowledgeable about a wide range of things; but his Ministers should be the ones most on top of situations in their Ministries, and the Prime Minister should only be giving advice behind the scenes. But that didn’t work; and the P.M. had to take center stage in a sad and tragic drama that left one man dead.
Sports? Well, that is not even a Ministry anymore under this administration. Hanging somewhere between the skirt tails of Education and Culture, sports has been a depressing topic in Belize for a long time. It is almost as if we have made a conscious national commitment to mediocrity. What has been allowed to happen, and continues to happen, in the nation’s #1 sport, football, is appalling and a disgrace to both administrations. At present, the only FIFA recognized semipro football league, the BPFL, seems to be in limbo – no executive elected yet (should have been February 21), reportedly no sponsor, and no word as to when the new season will start. Meanwhile, half the semipro players in Belize are playing in a “renegade” league, the Super League, which has refused to undergo the indignities of the Bertie Chimilio leadership in the FFB any longer.
And what has the Sports Ministry done? Well, it stood idly by while the FFB took the Belize National Team to play our “home” game in Guatemala in a World Cup qualifier last year. It then donated $40,000 of taxpayers’ money towards the FFB’s trip to St. Kitts; while the FFB subsequently went to Houston, Texas and collected many hundreds of thousands of dollars, some say over a million, and has not reported anything to either the Sports Ministry or any of the BPFL clubs, whose semipro players formed the national team. In fact, for years there has been no financial report from the FFB, which is one of the reasons why some clubs withdrew from the BPFL to form the Super League.
The Prime Minister has recently fired the last Sports Minister, but it was for something different – the controversy surrounding the NICH contract signed by its President without the knowledge of the Minister. If the past Minister of NICH was one quarter as interested in sports as he apparently was in culture, we would be more remorseful about his fall from favor with his P.M.