You see all those infomercials running on road safety, and then you drive through the village where I live, Camalote, and you wonder if you just entered a different country, a country different from the one where you saw all the road safety infomercials on television. How do you spend millions and millions of dollars on a highway and forget to include a pathway on the side of that highway so that children going to and from school, and pedestrians, don’t have to share space with motor vehicles?
It makes no sense for a country to invest in educating people who have no respect or compassion for others. You can’t take away the narrow objective of education, the individual bettering him/herself, but it can’t be that those who are selfish, get to abuse the resources of the country. It is a shame, a disgrace, damned criminal not to provide safe passage for people who live in a village.
As an afterthought, the road builders started putting in a pathway late last year, and that made a lot of villagers happy. It wasn’t the best pathway, because there are many culverts to allow for passage over the very deep drains on the sides of the road. It’s like an obstacle course, up and down hilly terrain for children who ride to school, so most of them put away their bicycles and walked.
I think I should tell you a little about our pathway before this story turns. They don’t have to go to oil- rich Arabia or Taiwan to get funds to construct our pathway. They clear the path with a small dozer, a D4 Cat or smaller, and they use a small roller to compact the material they put on the pathway. No, the material is not ferroconcrete or asphalt. The material on our pathway is white marl, and that’s just about the most common substance in our country. We are not about increasing the national debt.
Well, the joy is not for the entire village because, shortly after they started putting in the pathway, they quit. Our village is 2 miles long, and it’s just about 10% of the work that is done.
When I was young, I had a very cutting tongue, savage, but my old folk worked hard and got me to try to be respectful with my words. In the musical, Camelot, Mordred, King Arthur’s wild son, sang: I find humility means to be hurt. It’s not the earth the meek inherit; it’s the dirt. I find that people who are in high places ignore you when you speak nicely about their failures. It seems to me that people in Third World countries who attain high offices are usually a selfish breed.
When they started work on the pathway, I put away the idea of forming a committee to take the message to the people in power that they have to make this road safer for villagers. In the hope that I don’t have to start working on forming a committee again, let me say it very nicely to the people who have the power over our resources that it is the right thing for you to complete the pathway in Camalote, and after you have done that, you can go to another village and do right for the villagers there.
AG Pere’s entertainment value sinking
There are so few of us in Belize, you have to worry when you see a brother squandering himself in efforts that are completely unsalvageable. At the last Senate meeting he went after senators who were only saying that they hope the new Contractor General gets more human resource help than the previous Contractor General got.
The AG went on Wave to defend Senator Aldo Salazar for the sorry delay in the Senate report on wrongdoing by ministers and top government officials. Wait a minute: where does Pere get the breath from to be defending anybody hoo di lampoa when he, Pere, is the biggest dawdler in Belize and maybe everywhere?
Aldo is innocent, and the blame should fall on senators who were supposed to compile certain parts of the report and have not, the AG said. Wa, the reason why AG Pere is telling us this is because Aldo is such a quality person he doesn’t want any mud to fall on his brothers and sisters in the Senate.
The AG must have a bad memory, or doesn’t have any respect for us, think wi simpl, because this is not a new obfuscation game plan. Just last year he blamed the senator for the Chamber and the business community for holding up legislation on cyber bullying. The AG said they had asked to see the bill so that they could add their comments, but he hadn’t gotten any feedback. When the Chamber had called him out for foot dragging on the UNCAC implementation, the AG fired back that they were obtuse about the procedures to set up the convention.
In a country with a lot of boring politicians, it is worrying to see Pere diminish his entertainment value pursuing nonsense defenses that smell strong of bull from the back end. In his last salvo, commenting on the senators, he should have congratulated them for being at the top of their game, for their good service for the Belizean people. The AG can’t be so consumed with distracting people from the thousand and odd scandals in the government that he will talk slop.
Ehm, announcement from UghDP Secretariat
The UghDP Secretariat would like to inform the voting public that the party’s 2020 manifesto will NOT include any promise to fight CORRUPTION. This announcement was made necessary because many innocent party supporters are calling for us to renew the fight, but we just can’t carry on. We came, we fought, we succumbed, and now it’s to time to come clean with the people. Years ago, many years ago, our party was about fighting corruption, but in our last regimes we tasted what the PUP have been eating, an like daag weh geh fu like egg, there’s no turning back. We admit it: we are a bunch of crooks, though, of course, we are still not as bad as the PUP. But we’re getting there fast.
You are all alone, Romel Cuello
In his letter to the editor of the Amandala (Tuesday edition), Brother Romel Cuello put forward some arguments that were not in harmony with the new government law aimed at severely cutting the use of plastic containers in Belize. This month Belize stepped up the pressure on the use of single-use plastic/Styrofoam containers, and so these containers will soon disappear.
Most everyone in Belize wants plastics to go, but Mr. Cuello pointed out that the ban might not be practical. One of the important points he made was that food vendors will take a big hit because replacement containers will cost at least 20% more than the previous ones. This translates to higher prices for fast food and drinks for consumers, Mr. Cuello says.
Mr. Cuello said we could have dealt with our plastic problem by stiffening the penalty on littering. He said the replacement containers will still cause a pollution problem because they all contain a percentage of plastic, and that paper containers are produced by cutting down trees, cutting down trees being a primary cause of global warming.
Mr. Cuello may be alone in Belize with this view that the ban is unrealistic, but many others in the world out there are of that opinion. A number of professionals, many of them scientists, wholesale agree with Mr. Cuello’s position, and they list a number of other reasons why they believe a ban is not well thought-out.
You know that you can always find a group to argue the other side of every issue, and many professionals are for hire if you have an agenda you want to forward, so I like to sift things through before galvanizing on a position. No, I haven’t made up my mind yet on the matter, but based on pure emotions I’m with the ban.