UDP Politics as Usual

The crime situation…

The week when we don’t touch on crime will be the week when there seems to be a lessening of the murders and shootings and robberies and thefts and assaults, or at least a week when Government seems to have a clear plan on how to address crime. That ain’t happened yet, and while we’re dancing to the happy tune which plays incessantly on the airwaves, our youths are being gunned down on the streets, innocent children are casualties of the gang war and citizens continue to live in fear. The poverty situation is getting worse with no end in sight and the only heightened activity out of the Police Minister’s office right now seems to have to do with costumes for Carnival and not increased security for our residents. With the exception of a new song released, absolutely nothing in the way of a new initiative against crime has come out of the Minister of Police or from his boss Mr. Barrow. There has been no move to clean up corruption within the Police Department, no move to strengthen the Office of the DPP, no move to increase patrols on the street, no move to enhance the training of Police Officers, no move to do anything but sew sequins on the Minister’s tights for Carnival. And while the Minister remains the ‘butt’ of jokes in the Department the Prime Minister spends only a few days a month in the country and crime is allowed to rage unchecked. It’s the same old same old in the UDP.

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A Police Circular…

But wait, maybe crime isn’t as bad as we think it is. Maybe citizens aren’t living in fear and mothers aren’t crying for their loved ones lying bloody and dead on the streets. Maybe businesses aren’t being jacked daily; maybe criminals and murderers aren’t walking down the court steps each and every day. Maybe all the statistics are wrong. Maybe we are living in a good country where each citizen can walk the streets without fear and sleep comfy and content in their beds at night with doors unlocked and windows sprawling open. WTF! Well that’s sure what it looks like to me. We managed to get a copy of an email being circulated to officers commanding the Special Branch units across the country and to all divisional commanders entitled Coverage of People’s United Party (PUP) Activities. These officers who would normally be focused on fighting crime were instructed to – ‘mobilize your contacts, sources and any other available means to obtain the results of the meeting (National Party Council) scheduled for Saturday 28^th August, 2010 in Belize City. A verbal briefing must be done to HSB and NCO I/C Desk Officer 11 (Politics) of your findings. You are also directed that with immediate effect, monitor the PUP activities and any other political party followed by a comprehensive report of your finds.’ See, if all these resources can be focused on monitoring members of the People’s United Party, that means that they aren’t needed elsewhere in areas like, say, crime for example. This is the kind of reality we live with under the UDP – crime is allowed to continue unchecked but the Police are directed to monitor the PUP. Only in Barrow’s Belize.

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Mr. Broaster’s free pass…

How much do you want to bet that there will be no investigation into allegations of vicious police brutality against Superintendent of Police Edward Broaster? A man is claiming that Broaster and four Police officers detained him and then Broaster poured boiling water on him. He has the burns on the body to back up his story, and was bold enough to state that Broaster told him he would kill him if he came to the media with his story. It’s certainly not the first time that Mr. Broaster has been in the spotlight, though that gentleman seems to have a ‘free pass’ because of his political affiliations. Remember when Broaster concocted a story about an execution of a known ‘badman’ by his police colleague Chester Williams. In fact Broaster even produced the body of the ‘badman’ which he claimed was found in a deserted area where the so-called execution took place. Williams was pilloried for the ‘execution’ on the strength of Broaster’s say. Just recently it was revealed that the ‘badman’ who was executed by Williams (according to Broaster) is in Police custody in the United States, alive and well. Was Broaster investigated for his concocted story? Nope. He went to ground for a couple weeks till the story died and that was that. And how about the Police criminal ring which was broken up by the brilliant Broaster? On the strength of Broaster’s say so even his buddy the Prime Minister went out on a limb to call names and cite a conspiracy of startling depths. In the end, that was all a lie and an innocent man’s career was destroyed and his life turned upside down. But Broaster is still sitting pretty somewhere between the Police Department and the CYDP. If the Minister could take a minute away from trying on makeup for Carnival day, maybe he could see about dealing with these issues right within the Police Department.

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The New Chief Justice…

Pardon me, Mr. Barrow, and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but there is no way in hell that I would be comfortable with you having total and absolute say in the appointment of the new Chief Justice in this country. No way in hell! I listened to the interview with the Prime Minister in which he was saying that he has already gotten three applications for the post. According to Mr. Barrow, the Bar Association’s concerns with the unseemly appearance of the CJ’s removal have not mattered to him in the slightest. He will not allow the Association any input in the decision as to who will replace outgoing Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh. He will, as he said, look at the applicants and make the decision when he is ready. Excuse me for distrusting the PM, but he seems a little fixated on family appointments. There’s this little thing that justice must not only be done, but it must be perceived to be done, and I think that applies to matters of the Judiciary as well. After the appointment of his brother as Justice of the Court of Appeals, people aren’t too comfortable with the PM’s sense of reason and dedication to real justice. Add that to his blatant nepotism in the cases of his ex-wife, his son and his daughter and the equation looks even worse. And then put in his absolute determination to send the Chief Justice packing against all objections and the picture of the Judiciary in Belize isn’t looking so pretty. Who knows what the Prime Minister has in mind, but one thing is certain – whoever gets picked to sit in the CJ’s seat will be there for a purpose…a purpose dictated by the Prime Minister.

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The back to school crisis…

Right about now, according to Anthropologist Dr. Herbert Gayle, 1 in every 3 school aged children will have been excluded from primary and secondary schools in Belize, left to do what they will on the streets of Belize. That’s not so hard to imagine with 43% of Belizeans below the poverty line and about 15% more vulnerable to poverty. Education has become prohibitively expensive and that tragedy is exacerbated by the fact that unemployment continues to rise while businesses continue to close down and people are losing their jobs everyday. The economy is in ruins and cost of living is so high that priorities have had to be shifted dramatically. There is no more money for luxuries and precious little for the basics. Education is now a luxury because people have to eat and feed their children to survive, and there is barely enough for that. The Government of Belize has done absolutely nothing to put social programs in place to ensure that education remain viable to even the most impoverished among us. The Minister of Education, whose own personal wealth seems to have increased dramatically since entering office, seems to have forgotten that his mandate is to make school accessible to all Belizeans of school age. He is all caught up in pushing his own political career but has forgotten that our children have the right to go to school. When Mr. Barrow is questioned about education, he pompously boasts that his government has increased the budget allocation for education. But Mr. Barrow, if that money is being used to ensure that already wealthy UDP cronies and their children can study abroad at their whim, then it is of no help to us. If you double the budget to education but use it unwisely, it is of no help to us, to the poorest people in this nation.

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