I was waiting for the announcement of the winner of the PUP convention’s vote for Party Leader before I sat down to write this. When I listened to the Monday, March 31 news, all of that took a back seat, as I heard the anguish and pain of the relatives of the latest Southside shooting victim’s talk on camera.
What a contrast between worlds in Belize. The politicians talk about the future. The people talk about the pain of losing their sons, brothers, daughters, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews and cousins by gunfire on the streets of the city without pity, and about the near certainty that there will be more losses ahead!
I have been writing about these issues since I began my column for Amandala three years ago, and I suspect that a lot of us will be writing about and discussing the same problems for some time to come! Don’t get me wrong; the election of Johnny Briceño as the new PUP leader, something that augers what may be a slow return to the principles on which the PUP was founded in 1950, is welcome, but the problems of the Southside of the city appear to be far removed from the world that Belizean politicians live in.
Charles X hit the nail squarely on the head in his column written for the April 2nd issue of Amandala. He points out that most of the explanations for crime that the cops give to the media are nonsensical. There are many things that go down that are not what they seem to be at first glance, i.e. the so-called time line of events in the Putt Putt shootings in which those who were supposedly “retaliated against” were the part of the same crowd that was attacked in the first place, a particular cop who always seemed to be “Johnny on the spot” and the fact that many of these killings bore all the earmarks of “hits” or contract killings and it appeared that police investigations stopped far short of looking for those who ordered those hits! Add the fact that some powerful people desire the land that Putt Putt is on, well, you figure it out! This brother is perceptive!
The real concern has to be the new Government’s policy r/e the police department! Carlos Perdomo is the new Minister of National Security. Carlos Perdomo is not a bad man. I know him and I have talked to him several times. I have no quarrel with Mr. Perdomo at all. I just don’t think that he is the right person to be in charge of the police! Mr. Perdomo has spent the majority of his career in the world of academia. Academic smarts and street smarts are a world apart! This means that Mr. Perdomo has to rely on the police high command to interpret the circumstances of, along with the players who are responsible, the majority of the 27 murders that have occurred since January of 2008, and that’s the problem!
This is a Police Department whose high command was handpicked by the former Minister because they would obey his dictates. They were hardly the best or the most knowledgeable police officers available. They would do exactly as they were told to do, plain and simple. This is why we had the spectacle of selective enforcement played out to its max, and this is why that police high command is compromised!
Everybody who knows the streets on the Southside knows which police officers assist which group of players. Everyone knows which cops are hustling and what their hustle is. Belize is too small a country for information like that to remain confidential. As long as these guys are allowed to remain in positions of authority and to be “advisers” to a man whose own lack of “street smarts” forces him to rely on them, in the words of Charles X, “we are going nowhere.”
Even lawyers openly discuss the “problem police” and point out that these guys have to be changed before there can be any progress in reducing crime. After the recent conference between the top cops and the Minister, the Commissioner started talking about “the socio-economic aspect” of crime. That’s the first time he ever said anything like that since his appointment. Before, it was always, “just a few bad apples,” “old beefs,” “deportees” or whatever. Now crime has a “socio-economic aspect.” Well, what news; those of us in the media and on the streets were never aware of that before! It’s great to have been given an opportunity to learn something new!
Actually, there are people who are being replaced by the new Government. They are just not the ones who should be replaced. So again, we have a replay. Workers who were hired by the former administration and who did nothing wrong are losing their jobs to make room for the victors, while those the former government hired and those who were promoted – such as the police high command – are left to compound the damage that they have already done, because they can convince people, particularly a Minister that has to rely on them, that they are indispensable to the country!
These guys are hardly indispensable. I learned years ago that nobody is indispensable to any job. Anybody can be replaced by somebody else, who may do a better job than the person did. The reorganization of the security forces is absolutely essential if the issue of out-of-control crime is to be successfully addressed, and that issue should be at the top of the Barrow government’s agenda. To try to dodge that requirement is a recipe for more of the same! We can’t handle much more of more of the same!
As far as the BEL request for a rate increase, the PUC’s decision to deny that increase is probably the first time that “regulatory agency” ever took the people’s side. What it proves is that in today’s Belize, so-called “regulatory agencies” are just a reflection of the policies of whatever government is in power. This is not by any means a criticism of the new UDP’s government’s policy! They did the right thing, and they deserve the credit for that.
For a company to cry about rates when their profit last year was $30 million is unconscionable! Please understand that in economic terms, profit is what is left after all other costs of doing business, including salaries, are deducted! Let’s be real. Y’all cleared $30 million, the highest profit figure for any subsidiary of Fortis, far more than you could make in your home country of Canada, because Canada’s regulatory agencies have to be straight up, and you are crying? Please, cry me a river!
The principle that is supposed to govern the modus operandi of a “public utility” is as follows: since a “public utility” is by definition a monopoly, you can’t have ten electricity suppliers set up ten sets of poles and lines; that business needs to be carefully regulated by the State to prevent predatory business practices. It’s an important first step, but BEL has already served notice that they don’t intend to give up so easily. They have access to large sums of money and they are absolutely ruthless. Please be on guard, Belizeans. We only won the first round of a long and potentially dirty fight!
Politicians don’t have to go through what the rest of us go through. They have excellent health care at their disposal for themselves and for their families. They make far more money than 90% or more of their constituents. They have expense accounts to cover bills that the rest of us have to figure out how to pay. They travel around in vehicles that shield them from the travails of everyday life. They live in gated and secured communities. They live the good life, while most of their “fellow Belizeans” struggle to survive. That’s the contrast. Check it out.