Barrow is Bogus

By glenntillett@yahoo.com

A Facebook comment this week reminded me that sometimes in Belize the only constant seems to be change, but the more things change the more they remain the same.

I doubt that you can find it in the historical record because a lot of what was said back then in the electronic media, particularly on the morning talk shows, was never recorded and preserve for posterity, but I distinctly remember several prominent members of the UDP hierarchy making many statements on crime and the economy back in early 2005 and up until the February 2008 General Elections, back when they had all the answers.

I remember how following the call for “civil disobedience” how there were continual calls for a general strike by businesses, and indeed we were subject to strikes and shutdowns.

Although the official business representative organizations resisted the call, particularly to supposedly protest taxation increases, in an impressive display of unity, Chinese businesses all across the country did not open on April 14, 2005, ostensibly to protest the death Susan Yue, a 26-year-old mother and restaurant keeper who was knifed to death the previous Sunday in Orange Walk. The shutdown helped to fuel the general aura of chaos and anarchy that had been created by the call for “civil disobedience” and which then pervaded as a consequence.

We had seen shut downs before. On February 20, 2002 businesses nation-wide had pulled down the shutters to protest rising violent crime and had held an impressive rally in Belize City’s Central Park to underscore their protest.

The first time the Chinese business community had shut down was back in 1997 to protest the killing of one of their members, but I think that first protest had been confined mostly to Belize City.

This week the Chinese community again protested the continued escalation of violence and criminal acts against their businesses and homes by staging a one day shutdown. As I write this they are marching through the streets behind the funeral cortege of 14 year old Helen Yu who was killed in Belize City last week Thursday after three armed robbers stormed into her family store on Iguana Street and shot her and her father in the commission of a robbery.

I doubt that it will do much more than demonstrate their dissatisfaction.

This week a Chinese descent Belizeans was sworn in as President of the Senate, and he is candidate for election to the National Assembly. The juxtapositioning of these two events is not mere coincidence and are a terrific example of how we “play” politics with the crime issue in Belize.

Lee Mark Chang as President of the Senate will soon preside over a debate in that august chamber about the utility and efficacy of every increasing punishment for those convicted of all sorts of contraventions of our laws enacted to deter violent crime. Most people I have spoken to think that the real problem is our inability to enforce the present laws by detecting, apprehending and convicting those who offend. In truth the increasing penalties policy is really atypical of the Barrow administration political Band-Aid approach to the crises that keep spring up all across his government.

The deleterious impact of crime on our economy is unquestioned but near immeasurable. Today one sector of the business community protested. What exactly are they saying? Are they saying something that hasn’t been said before? Will they be joined by the wider business community?

At the end of the day, it seems to me the Chinese business community is saying that violent crime is getting in the way of them doing their business in Belize, and that the Barrow administration, despite the ascendancy of Lee Mark, despite the increased punishments, despite Restore Belize and Doug Singh, is impotent.

They are not demonstrating support – quite the opposite, they’re demonstrating their disdain. They are saying Barrow is bogus.

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