Barrow is bogus

By glenntillett@yahoo.com

Wisdom comes by disillusionment. – George Santayana

It was a year ago this week that the Honorable Prime Minister stood before the House of Representatives and introduced legislation that would enable the Government of Belize to take away the majority shareholding in Belize’s largest and most lucrative private company.

Two weeks ago the Auditor General’s Annual Report for the year April 1, 2008 – March 31, 2009 was tabled in the House of Representatives.

These two seeming disparate events a year apart are both excellent examples of the disingenuous nature that is so characteristic of Dean Oliver Barrow.

On August 24, 2009, the Prime Minister explained his reasons for expropriating Belize Telemedia Limited and said that the company would be sold. In fact he said: “There will be a prospectus done after the new board of directors takes over and the new articles of association have been adopted. Shares will be valued and offered for sale to the public. That offer will not be limited to Belizeans. We are determined, however—and the new articles of association that will be adopted will in fact oblige this—that ultimately Belizeans must retain at least a fifty-one percent ownership of the company that’s being taken over.”

The simple fact is that a year later there is no prospectus, no sale, and no prospect of a sale. The simple act of expropriating a private company was enough to give prospective investors pause, but that last line about retaining 51%, and utter stupidity about restoring to Government a “golden share,” in effect a casting vote on the Board of Directors , is enough to make almost any investor turn away in horror.

Just this week the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry “congratulated the Auditor General for the preparation and circulation of” his annual report.  It went on to laud “The Auditor General’s obvious commitment to the principles of transparency and accountability and his grasp of the importance of his role as an independent, objective assessor of the Government’s performance as it relates to the management of the people’s money is refreshing and laudable.”

Now no doubt Barrow will imagine he is being praised when the reality is that it is exactly the opposite. Barrow himself has had to make his own release on the report in defense of his administration and in it he lies blatantly. Whenever Barrow is caught with his pants down he immediately blames someone else as being a worst offender, usually the former administration, and pretends that he was just about to do something about it.

I am not even going to bother repeating the many things Barrow had to say about “accountability, transparency and good governance” or insult you with “whiff or corruption” quotes.

I am not even going to remind him and you that there is a report by the Auditor General titled “AUDIT INSPECTION – BELIZE CITY COUNCIL FOR THE PERIOD APRIL 2003 TO DECEMBER 2008” sitting on his desk that details corruption to a heretofore unmatched level.

I am not going to revisit the scandals in KHMH, BMA, BAHA, NICH, Police, BDF, Treasury, ministries of Natural Resources, Agriculture, Housing, Culture, and Transport, just to mention some, and all of which have erupted under his very large nose.

I am just going to remind him that he promised just a month before the February 2007 General Elections that he there would be “prosecution under an unjust enrichment law, and empowered Senate controlled by the social partners, and an air-tight accountability to the Auditor General, Contractor General and the Ombudsman.”

If history is prologue to the future then we know better than to expect Barrow to fulfill his promises. For him they’re just convenient words then, and inconvenient truths now.

Barrow is bogus.

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