Since we got our independence in 1981 it has been as consistent as the sun rising and setting every day that the main opposition party, after spurts in violent incidents, charges that the government is impotent in dealing with violent crime, and makes calls for the Minister of Home Affairs to resign. Already, at least twice since the PUP took office in November 2020, the main opposition, the UDP, has called out the government for its failing management of violent crime.
UDP chairman, Senator Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, recently stated at a press conference that “the crime situation has gotten completely out of control”, and that the government and people must “make some serious changes before the situation becomes irredeemable.” In fact, our murder rate last year wasn’t more horrific than it was in other years in the last two decades, and the statistics for the first three months of this year puts us on course for a rate lower than our worst years. However, our worst years being some of the worst in the world, we need to see a dramatic reduction in murders before we can be listed among the most peaceful nations, as we were prior to independence.
Since the turn of the century Belize has been averaging well over a hundred murders per year: Between the seven-year period 2015 to 2021 we averaged 129 murders per year, with a low of 102 in 2020, the year Covid-19 visited our country and forced us into a lockdown. A hundred murders in a year means more than a hundred lives lost. It also means a hundred murderers out there, a hundred souls lost, twisted in ways that are hard to comprehend; a hundred families and many friends who mourn, or are consumed by revenge because our country has completely fallen down on delivering justice; and hundreds of children and other dependents who have lost a major source of financial support.
Belize and three other countries in Central America – Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras – are among the most murderous nations in the world. Much blame for the extremely high number of murders in our region is put on the transshipment of drugs, particularly cocaine, but not all of the countries in Central America have become so homicidal. While Belize and the aforementioned countries shockingly average over 30 murders per 100,000 persons per year, Panama and Costa Rica average a far less barbarian 11 murders per year, and Nicaragua, with its socialist government, averages less than 7.
Most social scientists say that poverty is at the root of violent crime in our country. Battered by Covid-19, corruption in government, and failing agroindustries, Belize has never been so poor. The poverty alleviation programs by the previous government were insufficient. The initiatives the present government has introduced should bear some fruit, but they are too limited to have the impact we desperately need.
There are other major contributors to our disastrous state. Unequal wealth distribution, gangs and turf wars, a miserable justice system, a revenge culture that has been cultivated by the failed justice system, all figure in the loss of love and respect for human life.
The past two decades have been terrible. Many have grown despondent, accepting that violent crime will always be with us. Some turn away from the local newscasts, unable to cope with the endless spilling of the blood of our brothers and sisters. We did not nip violent crime in time and now we reap the bitter harvest for that failure. How could we have arrived at a place where some of us find glory in killing our Belizean brother or sister?
Our country is crushed under the weight of murders, and we don’t have forever to right our ship. Our pain is great, and as the UDP Chairman said, our problem is too much for any single government to solve. The UDP Chairman said government, the Opposition, AND people (social partners and community organizations) will have to get involved to halt this scourge in our nation. We came together to fight Covid-19, and a similar effort we must make to significantly reduce murders. It is the most important battle we have to fight. It is a battle we must win, now.
CSSPAR said GOB forgot Labor
Belize’s foremost think tank, CSSPAR (Centre For Strategic Studies, Policy Analysis And Research), led by former Ambassador and CEO in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. David Gibson, in a paper sent to the Prime Minister charged that the PM and his government are ignoring Labor. In the paper, “Recognizing the Role of Labour as an Equal Partner in Belize’s Development”, CSSPAR said that if government recognized the value of Labor in the development of this country, it would have been included in the recent Belize Investment Summit, which was held in San Pedro last year. Foreign investors and prominent local business persons were seated at the summit hosted by the GOB, but our labor leaders weren’t at the table.
CSSPAR says that the economic model we have been following since independence has yielded steady growth, but not enough, as the more than 50% of our people who are living in poverty attest. CSSPAR says Government and Business falsely assume that subduing Labor will yield a better outcome for our people, when it is the opposite, when it is the unleashing of Labor’s potential that will see our country rise out of poverty.
CSSPAR says the last time the minimum wage was increased was in 2012, when the rate was set at $BZ3.30 per hour, and that in 2003, when the minimum wage was $3.00 per hour, private interests had advocated for it to be fixed at BZ$2.00 per hour. Looking at the present initiative to raise the minimum wage to BZ$5.00 per hour, CSSPAR says that in the period 2005-2008 expert studies had shown that the minimum living wage was between BZ$4.50 and $6.58 per hour. CSSPAR says that by today’s measure, Belizeans earning less than BZ$8-$10 per hour are living in poverty.
We don’t need to look back very far to prove what CSSPAR is saying. The disdain for Labor in Belize was at its boldest during the recent impasse between the Port of Belize Ltd. and the stevedores, generational workers at the port. Local private business interests unabashedly sided with foreign business interests to put Labor in its place. In fact, local private business interests continue to side with foreign business interests that have gone to court with their high-priced lawyers in their agenda to show Labor that it has no place at the table.
The GOB, to its credit, did show some support to Labor on this one, but overall, as CSSPAR noted, Labor is an afterthought in the economic development of our country, and if that isn’t righted our poverty issues will persist.