“The child, the young girl who I believe is 7 years old, is the stepdaughter of my driver and so it certainly produced for me a very painful sense of having to deal in a fairly immediate way with this terrible depressing reality.” – Hon. Dean Barrow The Prime Minister of Belize Dean Oliver Barrow was interviewed this week by Keith Swift from Channel 7. This is the first time in recent memory that the PM has deigned to speak on critical issues like crime and oil. It was not a good interview for the leader of this nation. He came across like a cold fish, uncaring and unfeeling. He seems to have lost sight of the real issues plaguing his people. He came across as a man with little regard for the intelligence of the Belizean people and utterly comfortable in the belief that any and all of his utterances will be received as the gospel truth. As a seven year old child, the innocent casualty of yet another shooting in the city, faces the prospect of paralysis for life, Dean Barrow in his interview could not even mention her by name. It appears that to this robotic PM, young Janay Moguel is just a statistic, and an unimportant one at that. His quote reproduced above is ghoulish, insensitive and absurd. According to Barrow, it is only now that he is a little more familiar with the victim through his driver, that he realizes a little more the ‘depressing reality.’ He said that he has now been made aware that he will have to deal ‘in a fairly immediate way’ with the issue of crime. His words appeared meaningless and lacking in any discernible emotion. What will surely stick in the mind of Belizeans, though, is that it is just now, as we enter year two of unchecked and unprecedented violence and bloodshed in the city, that our Prime Minister claims he now realizes that he has to do something. The comments of the Prime Minister were an insult to all those families left grieving for their loved ones, victims of the violence which has overtaken the nation. Last ...

Mi bally Kim… Mein I’ve got a lot of UDP shenanigans, bloopers and blunders to deal with this week, what I like to call my version of the dumb, dumber and truly asinine show. And speaking bout dumb, I happened to get a look at a blog featuring the first lady second wife in which she’s captured in a truly ‘special’ moment. Kim in an interview with a foreign journalist was heard to complain about the health system in Belize. According to mi bally Kim, in hospitals around the country grown men who are sick are put into the same beds as babies and children because there is a chronic shortage of beds. Hmmm! She says that is bad because we don’t know the history of these men and they could actually be offenders of children. I think that the first lady second wife fell out of bed one morning, hit her head and came up with that there gem. Things are plenty bad in the health system, Kim, but that is one that I haven’t heard about. Methinks that when Kim was asked about problems in health she had no idea what to say so just pulled a ‘special’ thought out of her head. No wonder foreigners think we’re a backward nation and live in trees, when we got spokespersons like Kim talking crap. Jeez! ……………………… It’s your husband, stupid! Maybe the journalist should have asked Kim about the $160,000 vehicle her husband bought for the Minister of Health, or the millions her husband is paying to his ex-wife and daughter in exorbitant legal fees. Wonder how many hospital beds could have been bought with that money? When Kim was out there relating all these horror stories, seems she should have remembered that her husband is the Prime Minister of the nation and the one to blame for the mess that the country is in. Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask these questions when we visit Kim in her new plush office on Coney Drive. A little bird in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that GOB will be paying for a, get this, Office of the First Lady on Coney Drive. Hmmm! Kim, maybe you could tell us how much hospital beds the monthly rental on ...

This week there could be no more consummate hypocrite than that cold fish Dean Oliver Barrow. I only wish on this occasion that the award, in addition to recognition in the paper, included a public flogging or some other sort of substantial humiliation. Dean Oliver, in addition to being a hateful, heartless and absolutely cold-blooded character, takes hypocrisy into another realm. In a recent interview, he was asked about GOB’s take from oil revenues, which works out to an atrocious figure of just about 17.4 cents from every dollar. The first thing is that the Prime Minister in the interview wouldn’t even admit to the figure which was revealed by his Petroleum Department head. Barrow claimed he doesn’t know what the true figure is. What a liad sucker! How could the head of the nation and the Minister of Finance claim that he doesn’t know exactly how much we are getting from the oil? How stupid does he think we are? Then Dean Oliver starts going on and on about how he can’t do anything to improve our take because there is a signed agreement with the company and of course he can’t touch that because it is sacred. Oh, and he also would never do anything to mess with the company to increase how much Belizeans get because he doesn’t want to send the wrong message to investors and affect investor confidence. The Prime Minister can’t be serious. What a load of bull. Although you wouldn’t know it to hear him talk, this man going on and on with utmost sincerity about binding agreements and investor confidence is the very same man who got up one morning and took away a private company from the biggest investor in Belize, all in the blink of an eye. He didn’t give a damn then about agreements and investor confidence. By all appearance, all he cared about then was finding even more lucrative positions for his ex-wife and son while at the same time indulging a petty grievance against a British billionaire. Certainly that is all that’s come from the hijacking of BTL so far. Dean Oliver Barrow is a joke. He says one thing and does another with ...

By: Mike Rudon Jr. Here’s a question – when’s the last time you heard about a really big drug bust in Belize? Not the discovery of a couple pounds of marijuana during a house search and seizure or the confiscation of a ‘roach’ off a ‘youth man’ hanging on the block. Not that kind of drug bust, but the one which makes big news – the one where members of the media and the GOB press office are invited to some convenient furnace to watch over the destruction of hundreds and hundreds of pounds of cocaine neatly wrapped in 1 kilo bundles. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? In fact, the last such momentous occasion is outside the boundary of recent memory. So what exactly happened? Did big-time drug dealers go on holiday since the UDP got into office? Has Belize ceased to be a trans-shipment mecca between South America and the US? Are the narcotics cartels so afraid of Minister of National Security Carlos Perdomo that they decided to take up other hobbies? In the news the other night, just as the United States handed over a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment to Belize for the fight against drugs, there were reports of a plane landing somewhere in the Orange Walk district. Our authorities are calling it an ‘unconfirmed rumor’ because they somehow haven’t been able to locate the plane. Credible reports are that the plane was a drug plane. Not that long ago, a drug plane landed on the Northern Highway near to Orange Walk, coincidentally just a day or so after UDP OW Area Representative Gaspar Vega was sworn in as Acting Prime Minister as the PM left the country. Despite a BDF base and heavy Police presence in OW, the ‘good guys’ somehow arrived after all the narcotics had left the scene. And there are many other stories – of the famed Anti-Drug Unit being deployed on operations in the far south while a shipment slips through the northern border; of riot drills involving all the special units of the Police being called, attendance mandatory, leaving a window open for serious drug activity in other areas of the country; of officers receiving instructions to cease and desist their surveillance of ...

C.C.C. girls win thru to NSSSA football championships Orange Walk, January 30, 2010 The Corozal Community College girls won pride of place to represent the Northern Division at the national football championships to be hosted by the National Secondary Schools Sports Association (N.S.S.S.A.) and C.C.C. at the San Andres campus next Friday and Saturday February 12-13. The CCC girls became the Northern Division champions at the regionals hosted by Bishop Martin High School at the People’s Stadium on Saturday, January 30. The Orange Walk Technical High School girls won the opening game of the tournament 1-0 over the defending champs, the San Pedro High School girls. The Orange Walk girls held the island girls to a nil-zip draw through regulation time and 5 minutes of overtime. But when the San Pedro goalie Cristina Flores brought down Orange Walk captain Claudia Escalante inside the goal area, the referee awarded the OW girls a penalty which Escalante converted for the 1-0 win. The C.C.C. girls had won the 2nd game of the day 2-0 over the New Hope High School girls of Orange Walk Town. Flor Carcamo and Yolanie Oh led the C.C.C. offensive backed up by Mindy Riverol and Shamilee Zuniga on the wings and Anahi Riverol and Yamilexi Nunez at midfield, and Flor Carcamo soon scored the first goal to give the C.C.C. girls a 1-0 lead at the half time break. The New Hope girls could not contain the C.C.C. offensive as Anahi Riverol drilled home a 2nd goal in the 2nd half to clinch the 2-0 win. In the championship final, the C.C.C. defenders Dianellie Cabral, Nellie Mena, Yadiri Cawich and Teedi Gomez shut down the Orange Walk Tech girls’ attack led by Cindy Hendricks and Claudia Escalante. Shamillee Zuniga found an opening to blast in the first winning goal past goalie Cristina Flores. Minutes later Yolanie Oh brought it on the right flank and set table for Flor Carcamo to finish, but the Orange Walk defenders Sarah Rios, Yanira Chan and Lillian Magana triple-teamed Carcamo, giving Shamilee Zuniga the space to get off another shot that sailed over their heads into the right corner of the goal. Unable to equalize in the 2nd half, the Orange Walk girls conceded the 2-0 win at the final whistle. N.S.S.S.A. president Benedicto Ramos was on hand to present the championship trophy to the C.C.C. girls, the Orange Walk captain Claudia Escalante claimed the 2nd place trophy ...

Would the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance be willing to confirm or deny reports that his daughter billed GOB $2million in legal fees for just one case? And if that is so, would the Prime Minister be able to say if he intends to pay her? Would the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance please say if or when he will do something about the audit report which reveals serious corruption and millions of taxpayer dollars missing at City Hall? Would the Minister of National Security say when he will listen to the cries of all Belizeans, do the honourable thing and resign his portfolio so that a real man can take over the Ministry? And in the event of that happening, would his colleague the Prime Minister please say whether there ARE any real men in the UDP who can do the job? Would the Minister of Human Development please say if he has any intention of formulating any plan whatsoever to help the 43% of Belizeans who are living below the poverty line?