A Good Country No More!

Contributed

It has been a campaign slogan and a political song, a general statement on the state of affairs in Belize and a proclamation of love for life in Belize. But the sad reality is that it’s just not true anymore. As I write this article just a day or two after our nation celebrates its 28^th anniversary of Independence, Police are busy investigating three brutal murders over the weekend and a fourth sudden death which is believed to be a murder. As I turn to watch the news, the scene is of a bloodstained bit of sidewalk where a man who was stabbed bled freely before he was rushed to the KHMH.

Last weekend there were three murders, and the weekend before there were four. As I write this, glancing occasionally at the news, I hear about a pre-school teacher who was robbed and beaten on the compound of a reputable school. Just yesterday, a caller to a talk show told the story of another preschool principal who was jacked on a school compound in Belize City as she waited for a parent to pick up their child. That report never showed itself in any Police sit-rep.

In every report that does reach the media, there are violent robberies, theft of vehicles and boats, brutal home invasions, stabbings, shootings, hold-ups, and other vicious crimes, often with loss of life involved.

Crime is nothing new. It would be stupid to claim that it is. But this escalating, unchecked, manacling of law-abiding citizens by the criminal underworld is. The bloodbath which is claiming so many of our youth and our innocent citizens is; the absolute fear of citizens to walk the streets after dark is; the terror felt by residents cowering in their homes after multiple reports of bloody home invasions is. And for sure, the absence of the chief policymaker, Carlos Perdomo, and the total lack of any comprehensible or concrete plan to deal with crime is. Quite simply, Belize has never been in the situation in which it finds itself today. That is a fact, not agenda driven politicking.

There have been persistent reports that the Minister of National Security has had to be carried out of bar-rooms drunk. There have been persistent reports that the Minister of National Security has had to be carted off to hotel rooms by his security detail after becoming staggering drunk at different social functions. At one Police function, a report emerged that the Minister of National Security, apparently intoxicated, spent his time at the podium telling offensive jokes and even publicly and rudely berated a senior female member of his staff. At the recent expo, the Minister of National Security was seen walking beer in hand with a security detail complete with an Inspector guarding him. This is all a sick, sick joke. If Perdomo has fallen off the wagon, we extend all support and sympathy. But people are dying out here, and Belizeans deserve better than a Minister who is devoted to other pursuits while the country is named the #1 murder hotspot in the world. Straight like that…

A Belize City Councilor for the UDP, Laura Esquivel, recently gave an interview in which she dismissed the idea that Belize being named the #1 murder hotspot in the world would matter too much. See, Ms. Esquivel basically said, it’s only Belizeans getting killed, not tourists. I bear no ill will against Ms. Esquivel or her family, but can only surmise that when crime affects her family, and it will, her thinking will be vastly changed.

The reality is that crime has, and will, affect all of us. Belize is too small for us to believe that anything else will be the case. Of the multiple murders every week, I would place odds that we either know or are familiar with or have passed the victims on the street. How long will it be before our children are the victims of shootings, or jacking? How long will it be before our daughters are dragged into vehicles in broad daylight and brutalized, God forbid? How long will it be before our brothers and sisters are shopping in the neighbourhood grocery store and are shot when robbers walk in and start firing indiscriminately? How long will it be before our parents are sitting at home watching television and look up into the barrel of a gun held by a cold criminal with home invasion in mind?

Asking about the whereabouts of the Minister of National Security, his competence in the job and/or his plan to secure our families will be moot at that point, and it will not go well for the gentleman at that point. Imagine, in his Independence Day address, a state of the nation so to speak, the Prime Minister had nothing at all to say about crime. He waxed poetic and spouted eloquent prose with his trademark dramatic flair. All that won’t mean a thing if a beloved family member of certain individuals with a certain frame of mind is snuffed because the Minister of National Security is a non-entity and the Prime Minister doesn’t give a damn. Just as we on the streets walk in fear of the criminals which rule our lives, so should the politicians who have turned their backs walk in fear of those they have betrayed.

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