Strictly Personal Barrow is bogus

By glenntillett@yahoo.com

Shortly after the UDP won the 1993 General Elections Evan Hyde put a picture of Dean Barrow in the AMANDALA over the caption “Plastic Man.”

I was puzzled by the picture and caption and asked him why. As is his wont, he gave me both the short answer and the long answer but on two separate occasions. These days I wonder if Evan Hyde’s opinion of Dean Barrow has changed, if he still thinks Dean Oliver is a fop given to frippery, a narcissistic sell-out.

Or alternatively, I wonder if he thinks Dean Oliver has changed from the man who egged him on to beat “Lot” Aragon at basketball and sat laughing in the stands while the two men went at it. Evan gave the long answer in one of his From The Publisher columns in which he described the game and how it came about, and in that column in his own unique way he gave us an insight into our current prime minister that is still very much apt today.

Evan’s brother Colin bh thinks I should lay off Dean because he figures the PUP had ten years and Dean hasn’t had quite two years yet. With all due respect bro, (and with malice towards none), I not only don’t believe in political honeymoons but Barrow has already done ten years worth of crap in less than two years time.

If I sound bitterly disappointed in the dream merchant it is because I am. It’s not that I believed or disbelieved the promises or drank from the “Imagine the possibilities” cup. I rationalized that given a fresh start, a clean slate if you will, combined with two terms of experience Dean Barrow would do good or would at least do no harm.

The plastic man has morphed into Dean the Dictator, but more Kim Jong-il and less Lee Kuan Yew, or more Castaneda’s petty tyrant and less the Machiavelli’s philosopher prince he seems to think he is. I expect that all leading politicians will resort to mendaciousness at times but Barrow the Bogus has displayed such an extraordinary ability to speak out of both sides of his mouth that he is a walking contradiction.

You can point to nearly all of his utterances and I can show you a lie, an untruth, a mischaracterization, you name it, the entire gamut is represented.

Now I don’t consider that necessarily a failing grace if it produced the result of an improved society but less than two years after Barrow and his SOB’s our very existence as a nation-state and a free, peaceful, democratic and productive society seem much more threatened than at any time in the past two decades.

We are failing on so many fronts and it is only logical to conclude that if we continue to fail eventually we will be a failed state.

I give Colin a lot of credit because I think he has a fairly clear vision of what he would like Belize to be, and he has some distinct ideas about what we need to do to achieve that. Don’t dodge Colin, what do you think is Barrow’s vision for Belize and how practical is it?

You know Colin I hear people in the PUP who are seriously considering your push for PR and it doesn’t surprise me because nearly all the major reforms to our political system has come from the PUP.

You may not have agreed with some but it does not change the fact that of the two major parties it was nearly always the PUP who was willing to try and change things for the better.

I know you disagreed with the landowners’ position on that proposal in the Sixth Constitution Amendment Bill, but I have yet to hear your thoughts on any of the proposals in the Seventh Constitution Amendment Bill.

I am thinking that you agreed with the proposal in the former that a representative of the NGO community be seated in the Senate but called for a representative from the agro sector as well. You see Colin, this is why I say Barrow is bogus and is wasting our valuable time.

At this point it is clear that some of the proposals in the two bills, such as the enhanced Senate and the CCJ are popular. It is also clear that there is majority opposition to some of the others. If Barrow was genuine he would’ve long ago bundled the popular proposals together and passed them with little or no objections instead of trying to act as though those are the spoonful of sugar that will make the medicine go down.

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