Follow the light

In the early hours after the Prime Minister’s presentation of his Government’s budget the defining moment of the day’s events was the rage-filled insults hurled across the floor at members of the Opposition. The images that were seen on television during the evening news were of a legislative process reduced to a street corner quarrel.

For those Belizeans who are old enough to have followed the legislative process for the past 20 or so years, they would say that people like Phillip Goldson, Harry Courtenay, Curl Thompson, Lindy Rogers, Madam Liz and those legislators who have passed on must be turning in their graves. They were people who were known for their firebrand style of debating, but never in their years in Parliament did they reduce their presentations in the House to personal insults and vulgarity.

When you compare their contributions to the parliamentary process to what happened in the house last week, one has to lament that it was a sad day for Belize.

The most lamentable aspect of all this is that as far as the history of the nation is concerned; Friday, March 19, 2010 was one of the most important days in the history of this country.  It was on this day that the Prime Minister presented a budget that would strap Belizeans with a tax bill of $110 million dollars.  It was also the day when the House debated a series of money bills that would see government pass legislation to allow the issuance of hundreds of millions of dollars in additional treasury bills and treasury notes, yet the talk across the nation in the days that followed focused to a large extent on the behaviour of the Prime Minister rather than what these bills will do to the people of Belize.

In trying to explain his outburst in the House, the Prime Minster said in an interview on KREM that it disturbs him when the former Prime Minister gets up and speaks in the House.  He believes that after all that had happened in the past that Mr. Musa should not speak. This is no reason for vulgarity. After all, Mr. Musa was elected by the people of Fort George and he must speak if he is to adequately represent the interests of the people of Fort George in the National Assembly.

Yesterday when the Leader of the Opposition opened the debate in the House, he returned the conversation to where it needs to be, that of the budget and on the lives of the Belizean people.  In his argument against the budget he made the point that on April 1^st Belizeans will wake to a 25 percent increase in GST.  This means that when Belizeans go to the store with the same amount of money in their pockets as they did the day before, they will not have enough to pay for the same goods and the services they were able to buy just a few days earlier.  They will find out that their government has saddled the burdens of their incompetence onto their shoulders.

The sad reality of all this is that while the people must pay an additional $110 million in taxes, they will find no relief from the crippling crime situation, or from the broken up streets.  It will do nothing to put more children in school or see the roll out of NHI to those areas like Corozal, Orange Walk, Cayo and the North Side of Belize City.  Nothing from these new taxes will bring any relief from the rising cost of living.

The Belizean people are vexed over the behaviour of some of their parliamentarians, but more so, they are mad about these new taxes.  They cannot afford to pay more.

The Business Community, through their organization the Chamber of Commerce has come out against the tone in Belmopan, saying that they want the personal insults to stop.  They have also gone on record to say that they cannot agree with the budget because the burden is not shared.

In politics there are those who prefer the dark; they prefer to keep the light away from the truth but the truth is stubborn, it will always find its way to the light.  This Barrow administration is fast running out of dark places to hide from the Belizean people.

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