Gratiano, in Act 1 Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s play Merchant of Venice, warns against men who have an excess of ego.

He captures it better than I could:

“There are a sort of men whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

And do a willful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,

As who should say “I am Sir Oracle,

And when I open my lips no dog bark!”

That therefore only are reputed wise

For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,

Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.”

It is rare quality of a man, indeed, to have such extreme conceit to believe that whatever he says or does should not be questioned or criticized; that everyone should know their place (animals included); that he is the most brilliant of all and just about everyone else is a fool.

But while it is a rare quality of other men, such is the trademark, the brand, the singular defining quality of our Prime Minister.

We have seen him in his element displaying this quality in the House of Representatives time and time again calling representatives of the people fools.

We have seen how he has treated his fellow UDPs when they dare to have differences of opinion with him or if he doesn’t like them- ask Zenaida, Cardona, Castro, Peyrefitte et al.

We have seen how he condemns and vilifies ordinary citizens; how he becomes judge, jury and executioner when it is convenient to him, but conveniently becomes ignorant when it suits him.

We have seen how he disrespects men and women in the judiciary.

We have seen how he tries to bully the press to silence.

We have seen how he breaks campaign promises with impunity.

We have seen how his opinion and his actions must always be right, because he is Sir Oracle.

We saw it again this week.

We saw this in his response to a question from Channel 5’s Marion Ali. In an attempt to get some clarity on what he as Prime Minister regarded as breaches of journalistic ethics, Marion asked him: “Who decides, who judges what is impartiality? Both sides have made their positions known.”

The Prime Minister’s response: “Ultimately, the government has to be the judge…”

Now Mr. Prime Minister, it doesn’t take a lawyer to know that you can’t be a judge in a dispute in which you are involved; except that we forgot, you are Sir Oracle.

We saw it too in the Prime Minister’s response to the question regarding the appointment of a new Chief Justice. We all recall that last year when the issue of the appointment of a new Chief Justice had become a hot topic, the Prime Minister, screaming and all, refused to accept the Bar Association’s recommendation to have an Advisory Committee be set up to vet applicants for the post. He went on to say very nasty things about the Bar in the House. The Bar in turn had to chastise the Prime Minister for this. But, the Prime Minister, never to be outdone, reminded everyone, lest they forgot, that he is Sir Oracle: “You see, if I had just gone and acted on my own we might have saved the tax payers some money”His way, of course, was to appoint whomever he wanted as Chief Justice without any consultation from stakeholders like the Bar Association.

Common sense nuetralises an excess of ego. The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to know this- it’s either his way or the highway.

My UDP friend, in defence of Dean Barrow’s chancey and petty bullying of Channel 5, sought to compare Barrow to US President Barack Obama the other day.

“But even Obama did the same thing,” he said. “Remember when Obama refused to give any interview to Fox television station”.

Now I was prepared to give my friend the benefit of the doubt and believe what he was telling me. But my instincts were telling me otherwise- “bwai check dah thing out fi yuself!”

And as it turned out, Obama never did such a thing as Barrow is doing to Channel 5. He did not issue a proclamation banning all his Cabinet Secretaries and all representatives of the US Federal government from giving interviews with Fox television. He could never make such a crazy public declaration of war against a media house in the US.

What Obama in fact did was to refuse to give exclusive one on one interviews to Fox. And as you may know, Obama had to quickly back-pedal from this position and has since given exclusive interviews to Fox reporters.

But what is more important though is that Channel 5 can never  be likened to Fox television station; nor can Marleni, Ava, Isani, Marian, Delani and the other news personnel at Channel 5 be likened to Bill O’Reilly or Glen Beck  or any of Fox’s extreme right wingers. Fox is a television station that deliberately propagates and fuels racist innuendoes and in many instances outright racist statements against Obama; it is a television station which continues to give fodder to lies that Obama is not an American; that Obama is a terrorist; a television station which incites hate against minorities and immigrants.

Okay, so that we have now cleared up that Barrow is not Obama, and Obama is definitely no Barrow, it brings me to the question: what then is Barrow’s intention in placing this crazy embargo on Channel 5?

Barrow says that Channel 5 has been “terribly unfair, terribly unprofessional when it comes to the government”. But what is the evidence of this which Barrow has presented to the Belizean public? Is it so because he says so?

It is an excellent political stratagem of his which he employs repeatedly and which seems to work all the time: condemn the perceived opponent, and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat the condemnation. Even if not true, a good number of people will believe it anyway. Barrow has not offered anything to show Channel 5’s extreme unfairness and unprofessionalism as Obama in the United States was able to illustrate with Fox. Obama relied on a Pew Research study which showed that 40 % of Fox’s news stories on Obama in the last six weeks of the election campaign were negative. Armed with that information, Obama justifiably refused to give personal interviews with Fox; he did not and could not dictate to his Cabinet members that they too were to do the same.

So again, what is Barrow’s agenda?

He exposed his hand last Friday in an interview with Channel 7, though I think he doesn’t care if he did.

“Once that is out there we can go back to seeing how we can do business,” he said.

In other words, once he has succeeded in irreparably damaging Channel 5’s reputation as an independent and impartial news organ, mission accomplished. When Channel 5 in the future then reports on any transgression of Barrow and his government, Barrow will dismiss that news-story as being biased, with the hope that many people will equally dismiss it – an excellent stratagem indeed.

Barrow last Friday in his same interview with Channel 7 characterized his actions against Channel 5 as the “far softer approach”. Can you imagine the man? I shudder to think what would have been the heavy-handed approach.

When the Prime Minister of a country and his Cabinet reach the point where they meet, sit, and discuss a news organ and then go on to craft a nasty press release attacking and threatening that news organ, that is more than cause for concern; it is confirmation of a Prime Minister and his government intent on bullying the press; it is confirmation that we are heading down the road of a dictatorship.

These events indeed are chronicling the making of a dictator.

In the 2001 movie “Gladiator” starring Russell Crowe, the short, uncompassionate and ruthless rule of a young Roman dictator (Camodos) is beautifully depicted.

He is a brilliant political strategist. He knows and understands the pulse of the people.

But he does not deal with the real concerns of the people. The problems of crime, poverty, unemployment, sanitation and health which confront the people are not addressed.

Fear and wonder: that is how he rules. It is a powerful combination, one of his political opponents points out. People are absolutely fearful of him, even fearful of whispering criticisms of him. In the meantime, he appeases the people with spectacles and shows to divert their attention from the multitude of problems facing them. As Graccus, one of the characters in the movie says: “… conjure magic for them [the people] and they will be distracted.”

There is a dictator in the making in our country, who rules in similar vein. Here is the chronicle of only a few misdeeds of this dictator.

I suppose he always had it in him, but it really started showing signs when back in April, 2008, he started messing with our constitution. He did it under the guise of splendid and fantastic proposals which would “enshrine the reform agenda” in Belize- the spectacle and show.

But as Belizeans gradually began reading and dissecting those proposals they quickly became aware of the deviousness in them and simultaneously were jolted into fear. There was the proposal for preventative detention, which would have allowed the police and security forces to lock up citizens for up to 168 hours- they can now do that for up to 48 hours. There was too, the sinister proposal to strip the job security of Court of Appeal judges; a law which would have judges of the Court of Appeal be appointed for a one year term limit and then be subjected to re-appointment thereafter. This is like putting someone on probation annually.

There was no rationalization then and there can never be any rationalization in having the appellate judges in your country be subjected to such madness, each year, as their one year term expires, worrying and wondering whether they would be reappointed. That is the sort of thing that fuels judicial interference. Just this past October, the President of the Court of Appeal resigned when he became aware that this proposal had actually become law.

He further has arrogantly and unconstitutionally refused to bring one of his key reform agenda into law. This is the law that would have seen the appointment of a 13^th senator and a reconfiguration of the Senate with non-government senators having the majority. This was a law that was voted in favour of by more than 25 members of the House of Representatives, yet, one man has refused to bring the law into effect.

This man, though he has no constitutional or other authority to do so, has declared to Belizeans and the world that this law will never come into effect. This man, when reminded by Jules Vasquez that this was one of the reform platforms on which he was elected ‘faceyly’ declared: “It ain’t going to happen…[I]t’s a manifesto promise I gladly break.”  Isn’t that the action of a dictator, who clearly believes that the country and all its institutions are his to manipulate and control when and how he feels?

He has also taken and used the sanctuary of the House of Representatives as his public stage to threaten, lambast, disrespect and ridicule who he feels, when he feels, and how he likes, because he knows he has absolute immunity in there. Of course he started first doing it to the members of the Opposition- the spectacle and show. Belizeans may at first have found this amusing but don’t think so now. But Barrow, buoyed by the fact that he has gotten away with it because the Speaker of the House has refused to put him in check, has gone on to bombastically disrespect the head of the judiciary, the former Chief Justice and then for good measure threatened the Bar Association of which he is a member. This is unheard of in any modern democracy.

Then he passed some other repressive laws like the amendment to the Essential Services Act which turns union members into criminals even if their strike is just and necessary.

In the meantime, Barrow gave the Belizean public the greatest spectacle and show upon getting elected- the arrest and charge of Musa and Fonseca. Nobody finds it strange that Barrow did not appeal the decision of the Chief Justice when he dismissed the charges against Said Musa? It was all a show, a distraction. He knew that there was no case against the two former ministers of government but as a way to stave off the avalanche of post elections expectations of the people this great spectacle and show was conjured up.

He too makes decisions of national importance based on his personal vendetta. Take this whole BTL takeover fiasco. Can any Belizean other than his family and close friends say how they have benefitted from the so-called “nationalization” of BTL? The BTL take- over, it is now clear to everyone, was just a show and spectacle. In the meantime, the lives of the workers of BTL, word is, have become worse than it was under Ashcroft.

He takes this same approach even with his own party members. Anyone remember Mark King? He was politically killed because he spoke out against the goings-on at City Hall back in 2008. Barrow had preferred that the Belizean public did not get confirmation as everyone already knew what King came forward to say. Marcel Cardona can be asked about that as well: his political demise came just Sunday last as a result. Zenaida Moya is still holding on to her political life because she crossed him.

Then he condones those of his Ministers of Government in their personal witch hunts. Patrick Faber, for instance, fired single mothers at will in the early days of Barrow’s administration, and instead of chastising Faber, Barrow endorses and lives by this same arrogance and meanspiritedness.

As a caller to one of the morning talk shows said the other day: “We are not living in a free country. We have a Prime Minister who duh weh ih wah, sey weh ih wah and nuh kay.”

These events are truly chronicling a dictator in the making.

The Prime Minister was on Love TV “Belize Watch” the other night. He was asked how would he like to be remembered as Prime Minister? As presiding over an “era of good governance,” he answered.

The Prime Minister was clearly making fun of us again, taking us for a ride, yet again, insulting our intelligence yet again.

You may not remember, but back in April, 2008, just after being elected to government, the Prime Minister introduced into the House of Representatives, the Sixth (Constitution) Amendment Bill.

The Sixth (Constitution) Amendment Bill, he said at the time, “are splendid proposals … fantastic proposals by way of enshrining the reform agenda and I think all of us that are members of Cabinet, all of us that are members of this party, all of us that are members of the Government of Belize, can feel extremely pleased with the fact that we are delivering so early on this fundamental commitment to the people of Belize.”

Included in the raft of constitutional changes was the expanded Senate which would have provided for a relinquishing of control of the Senate from the ruling party in government to the Opposition and non-governmental organizations representatives.

This, as the Prime Minister said back in April, 2008 when introducing the Sixth (Constitution) Amendment Bill, was to enshrine the reform agenda. It was a manifesto promise. And indeed having an oversight body like the Senate being out of the control of the ruling government was a “fantastic” idea. But it will not come to pass. As the Prime Minister told Jules Vasquez last Friday in an interview given after the House Meeting, “It ain’t gonna happen!” and “I am not going to do it!”

“[It’s] a manifesto promise I gladly break,” the Prime Minister went on to say.

Now watching the Prime Minister on Friday last and then on Tuesday night on “Belize Watch”, I had to pinch myself. Was I like in the Twilight Zone or what? How can a Prime Minister so arrogantly and glibly break a central plank of his campaign promise, yet, he wants to be remembered as presiding over an era of good governance? Particularly since the newly constituted Senate was to be a reform mechanism that fosters good governance.

As has been his MO (modus operandi) for the past 2 ½ years, the Prime Minister tried to blame his outright reneging on this very important manifesto promise on the PUP. I say “try” deliberately because he did not/cannot succeed on this one.

The PUP fought against “all the reform measures,” he said. That is rubbish!

The Prime Minister keeps doing this, and sadly, the PUP has not set the record straight when he throws these things out there.

He did the same thing back on 24^th March, 2010 after the Privy Council had given its decision in the so-called “Referendum Case”.

“The PUP fought these amendments tooth and nail, we had to go to the Privy Council, they would be a beneficiary of the provisions in the amendment that would cede control of the Senate to the PUP and the social partners. We had to wait so long to be able to bring into force any of the provisions in the law. I am saying, I don’t think anyone can begrudge me the feeling that let them wait as long as the Cabinet thinks appropriate.”

But the Prime Minister is untruthful when he says this. There was no PUP challenge to the Sixth (Constitution) Amendment Bill. Four citizens took the Government to court because Barrow’s Sixth Constitutional Amendment had in its first draft wide and sweeping changes which would have affected all citizens of Belize fundamental rights: these included the preventative detention proposal where citizens could be locked up without having the right to bail. At the time there was a law in place under the Referendum Act which required the Prime Minister to hold a referendum before any changes to the fundamental rights of a Belizean citizen could be tampered with. That was why the four citizens, Alberto Vellos, Darrel Carter, Yasin Shoman and Dorla Dawson, went to court to ask the court to make the Prime Minister do what he was mandated to do under the law – that is, hold a referendum.

Indeed, even the Privy Council, which Barrow back on March 24^th, 2010 said vindicated him, made this point: “… in commencing proceedings, the respondents [the four citizens] were acting out of public spirit, being concerned at the proposed restrictions of fundamental rights of citizens of Belize.”

And, by the way, the Privy Council only ruled the way it did “having regard to the complex series of events that [took] place since the respondents [four citizens] applied for judicial review.” The Privy Council was clear, that it was only as a consequence of these complex series of events after the case first went to the Supreme Court that “the Prime Minister is no longer under any obligation to request a Writ of Referendum.”  As is evident, the Prime Minister, contrary to what he has been saying all along, was under an obligation to hold a referendum, bottom line.

Had it not been for those intervening series of complex events, the Privy Council would have ruled against the Government. And those intervening series of complex events included the Government going back to the National Assembly and making some other amendments to the Sixth (Constitution) Amendment Bill although the matter was before the courts. The Prime Minister, as an eminent attorney, knows that lawmakers should not touch an issue when it is before the courts. But he and his UDP government went ahead and did that anyway.

It is for all those reasons naturally that the Privy Council did not award the government “costs.” Costs is what is usually awarded to a party which wins its case. So, although the Prime Minister says the government won its case and was vindicated by the Privy Council that is not accurate. And so now, for the Prime Minister to use this as the excuse why he will not bring the expanded Senate into law is deceit in its highest form.

The Prime Minister knows too well that at its mid-term mark, his Government has nothing to show except a ballooning deficit, onerous taxes, a further degenerating society, countless home owners losing their homes, countless workers becoming unemployed, countless business going under, crime engulfing the country, hope nearly nonexistent. Thus, the Prime Minister is more worried about his and the UDP’s political future than the good governance that he likes to talk about and that is the reason that the expanded Senate will not, under his watch, become law. He knows that as life has become “haada” for just about everyone, people are not thinking or acting squarely along political lines. He knows that the members of the Senate, particularly, the Civil Society representative, will shed their political ideology and vote for what is best for the country right now. Bottom line, the UDP is not good for Belize right now and this sure ain’t no era of good governance.

A colleague of mine remarked the other day that the Ministers of government should be mandated to do drug testing, at least three times for the year. They do the ‘strangest’ things, he said. “And to think, they are the most powerful people in the country, whose decisions and actions affect all of us, even if we voted for them or not.”

There is more than a kernel of truth in the observation of my friend, who was a very successful politician in years gone by, he being a Minister of Government and all. He was being of course euphemistic to described the actions of Ministers of Government as ‘strange’, but fi’ true, deh Ministers of Government do have you scratching your head many times.

Consider, for instance, this week’s revelation that no less than the newly appointed Minister of Police was rendezvousing with friends to St. George’s Caye on a boat that was ‘un-registered’ and later searched by the personnel of the Police Anti-drug Unit because the boat was rumoured to be “a drug vessel”. And yes, the Honourable Minister of Police was present when the search was done. That is indeed, to be euphemistic, a very very ‘strange’ sequence of events for the Minister of Police and Public Safety to be netted up in. Ih look wah way, as they say in the street.

Now the Minister of Police will deny that he had knowledge that the vessel was ‘un-registered’ as the television newscast put it. But surely, as the Minister of Police and Minister of Public Safety (which basically means the Minister of law and order), he should know more than anyone else that ignorance of such things can still get you in trouble with the law. He should know, (and if he doesn’t know, he should ask his fellow Ministers the Attorney General or the former Minister of Police Carlos Perdomo) that there is a law that this UDP government passed which sends a citizen to jail if he is in a vehicle in which a gun is found, even though he has no knowledge about that gun which is found. A citizen can’t get bail from a Magistrate if he is caught in a sequence of events like that; he is remanded to Hattieville until he can get a lawyer to secure bail for him in the Supreme Court.

Now, as the Minister of Law and Order, you would want to think that he knows a little something about the laws of Belize, right; in any event, that should be a prerequisite for the job. So then, his actions or omissions are scrutinized more vigorously.

And this is the point here. Even if the Minister of Law and Order knew or did not know that the vessel on which he was a passenger was “un-registered”, the owner of the vessel, his friend, was breaking the laws of Belize when it sailed from Belize City to St. George’s Caye and back..

Section 16 of the Harbours and Merchant Shipping Act expressly states that no vessel shall proceed to sea or on a river without a ‘sea-going Certificate”. The section further makes it a criminal offence for the owner of such vessel to send or permit such vessel to proceed to sea or on a river without a “sea-going certificate.”

Now all this would be funny, except that there is no law and order in Belize right now, and the man hand-picked to restore law and order in Belize has been caught in an incident which ‘look wah way.’ In other countries, Ministers of Government resign for even less.

The Minister of Police and Public Safety of course is not an elected representative, so he has no constituency or base to pander to. I suppose then, all of this will go unpunished by the electorate.

But by any accounts, the incident does look ill on the Minister and the Ministry of Police; not the ‘ill’ Jenny Lovell was speaking about the other night on Duets.

In a time of anarchy, which is Belize right now, it is doubly important that the state apparatus of the police is seen to be operating aboveboard. That is the only way that citizens can regain confidence in it. Incidents like this one involving the Minster of Police don’t give that appearance; it gives a contrary one.

I am sure our friends in the North are watching and taking note.

He stood at the corner of Tigris Street and Basra Street, one of these commonly referred to hotspots in Belize City, seemingly unfazed by the gunfire that had barked out just minutes earlier. He had the DVDs he was selling neatly displayed on the ground for the passersby who were interested in the Bob Marley or Peter Tosh or Burning Spear genre of music.

Less than 24 hours earlier, a nineteen year old girl, in the prime of her youth, was shot in her head for no reason: she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The body of another teenage girl, it would be learnt later, was found partially decomposed near the Mile 5 Bridge on the Western Highway.

“Yuh brave tho,” I said to my friend, as I drove up slowly, trying to make light of a very serious matter. “You nuh hear how people di get kill just di hang out pon streetside?”

“So weh yuh expect mi fi do?” he asked rhetorically. “Stay home? How ah wah mek mi money fi live?”

My friend is right. What is a man to do?

The streets of Belize City are dangerous, cold, treacherous and unforgiving right now. There is no gender, ethnicity, age group or social class which is immune from the vices of the cold, treacherous streets. Man, woman and child; prominent people and people of straw, at any given time, can be victims of the cold, treacherous streets.

But, a man has as his first priority- to take care of himself and those dependent on him. He must live so he must plod on through these same dangerous, cold, treacherous and unforgiving streets in order to survive. And so, my friend being consumed with his own personal issues of survival was hardly troubled by the shootings and killings around him. So long as it was not someone close to him or someone he knew personally, my friend could hardly be bothered by the personal misfortune of others in the society. His personal survival took priority over anything else. And I suppose there is nothing outrageously wrong with that. Just that, it seems to me, that that psyche of personal survival trumping everything else, is having a debilitating and regressing effect on the society at large.

When you think about it, this psyche of personal survival over everything else is what drives the gunman who is given a hit to take someone’s life. This is what drives the person who jacks, the thief (white collar or common thief)), the drug dealer or the corrupt government Minister or official. At the end of the day, it comes back to the question my friend asks: “how ah wah mek mi money fi live?”

And therein, seems to me, lies the problem.

When the economy of the country is comatose as it is right now; when citizens (especially the young) cannot make an honest living doing legitimate work, then illegal and criminal activities mushroom and spiral out of control; the psyche of personal survival over everything else also spirals out of control.

The government has launched an initiative called “Restore Belize” which it says is a crime prevention initiative.

The best known crime prevention strategy is to give people opportunities in life. To do this the government of course needs the money and resources. But this cannot come from an economy which is almost dead. It has to come from without. It has to come from an economic boom brought on by foreign investment.

This government has shown that it cannot do that. All it continues to do is spit out plans and initiatives that are bureaucratic layers of committees.

The only way to restore Belize is to for government to attract foreign investors. This government has shown that it cannot do that. Far from that, this government has shown an intention to keep foreign investors away.

In the meantime, the rest of us, who don’t have the luxury of police security, continue to live on the edge, not knowing if we will be the next victims of the cold treacherous streets.

Lawyers have a thing they call the “rule of law”. It is a necessity in any society, this rule of law thing – that the laws of the land must be obeyed by everyone, from Prime Minister downwards. This rule of law thing has a co-existing side to it: when laws are not obeyed, the system (which is to say, the justice system) must take that citizen to task.

There is an overwhelming view by Belizeans that we don’t have any rule of law in this country right now. Government Ministers and officials, criminals, indeed everyone does what they want without consequences. The fact that there is just widespread abuse of authority by those in authority only exacerbates this lack of confidence in the system.

It seems like almost each and every day, a Belizean citizen is sent a letter from the Lands Department telling them that their lease has been cancelled or their land taken away. The distressing thing of course, is that that same lease or land is given to a UDP supporter or crony. And many times the Ministry of Lands tries to pull one over citizens, taking away their land and saying that the land is needed for a public purpose. Very recently, the Chief Justice had to scold the government for this wrongheaded and unconstitutional practice of taking away a citizen’s land to give to another private citizen under the guise of a public purpose acquisition. In addition to giving the man back the land, government was ordered to pay the man $30,000.00 as well.

Then there is also the widespread abuse of citizens’ rights by the police. The police department, it may be said, is like a punching bag and is daily pounded with criticism and condemnation. You would have thought then, that the police will by now have gotten their act together. But things just seem to be getting worse. Citizens are routinely locked up by the police in excess of the legally allowed 48 hours and oftentimes released only to be “recycled”: this is the term the police use when a person who is in detention for 48 hours is released and then picked up back as he steps out of the police station to spend another 48 hours in detention. Whilst it is true that the police have a tall order to contend with in terms of the criminality on the streets, the abuse of their authority in these kinds of ways do not help their crime fighting capabilities.

These visible shows of abuse, it seems to me, have caused the lack of confidence in the system and a correlating and deleterious culture of lawlessness and indiscipline in our country today. They, no doubt, have an even more deleterious effect on the psyche of our youths.

Presently in Jamaica, the seeds of lawlessness and indiscipline (abuse of authority and lack of confidence in the system) are wreaking havoc in that country. A civil war between police and badmen have erupted in that country following the government’s move to capture accused crime boss Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who is wanted in the United States as the mastermind of a sprawling cocaine and marijuana smuggling operation to that country.

Dudus appears to be more powerful than the Prime Minister who was forced to fess up to the nation that his political party has been using their influence to stall his extradition to the United States.

We in Belize seem to be heading on a collision course ourselves. You can feel it in the air.

Our Prime Minister was on television the other night, mocking us with his talk of transparency and his law firm and the oil company his law firm represents. Meanwhile, the opportunities for young men and women to attain a decent life continue to shrink as small as the point of a needle. Hopelessness and lawlessness are the order of the day; people’s confidence in the system is further eroded on a daily basis. Yet, this government continues to b—s— the people with talk of transparency and accountability. The people are watching and feeling Mr. Prime Minister.

Montevideo is a sprawling port city of over one million people situated on the south coast of Uruguay along the Atlantic Ocean. According to Mercer Human Resource Consulting, in 2007, it provided the highest quality of life in Latin America. But Montevideo is celebrated internationally not only for its opulence. It is in fact the birth place of FIFA World Cup football.

An international football powerhouse at the time, Uruguay hosted and won the first FIFA World Cup which took place in Montevideo in July, 1930. But the road to Uruguay’s hosting the first FIFA World Cup started eight years earlier.

In 1924 at the Olympic Football Tournament in Montevideo, Uruguay defeated Switzerland to emerge as the Champion. Four years later, at the Olympic Football Tournament in Amsterdam, Uruguay defeated its South American rival and next door neighbor, Argentina, to repeat as Olympic Football Champs. But FIFA, which in 1914 had assumed responsibility for the organization of the Olympic Football Tournament,    wanted its own tournament of Football World Champion. Its President Jules Rimet was relentless in bringing this dream to a reality. When the FIFA Congress decided on an official FIFA World Championship in May, 1928, the World Cup, as they say, was born. And Uruguay, being the two time Olympic Champions was selected host country.

That first World Cup in Montevideo did not see the participation of as many countries as in recent years; in fact only 13 nations participated in that first World Cup- seven South American, four European and two North American nations. The finals of that World Cup saw a repeat of the 1928 Football Olympics with Uruguay and Argentina clashing and Uruguay emerging as the first World Cup Champs.

Fast forward to the year 2010.

This year, the global phenomenon that is the World Cup is being staged in South Africa- the first time in the Cup’s history that an African nation is hosting it. Thirty two nations in the month of June in South Africa will meet on a football pitch and determine world dominance.

Teams don’t get to play in the World Cup by mere invitation as in 1930. There is the agonizing, dizzying, almost incomprehensible odyssey that each nation (except for the host nation and defending champions) must embark on to secure a slot in this battle of thirty two nations.

We in Belize all know too well how difficult a feat this is, compounded by the tumultuous mad-r—s that continues to take place in our FIFA sanctioned national football association.

There are no countries from the Caribbean in this World Cup. The two countries on the Korean peninsula will be there though. The European teams number the most at thirteen. But there are six African nations in this World Cup, one more than the South American continent.

My sentimental favourite is the host South Africa Bafana Bafana team, donned in their yellow and green jerseys like the Jamaican Reggae Boyz of 1998. The South African team was expelled from FIFA in 1976 after the Soweto uprisings. But the country was re- admitted into FIFA in 1991 following the end of apartheid and the development of a multi-racial South African Football Association. The nickname Bafana Bafana, which in Zulu means “the Boys”, was then given to the team.

It is no small achievement to host a global event like the World Cup, and South Africa, two decades after apartheid, has done a phenomenal job so far. They, however, to sustain history and as all previous host teams move on to the second round, must jar with perennial favourites France, two time champ Uruguay and Mexico in their Group A matches. France, Mexico and Uruguay are ranked 10^th, 17^th and 18^th respectively in the FIFA April top 25 ranking list. The South African Bafana Bafana team, however, was not ranked in this list, but two African nations Cameroon and Nigeria were at 19^th and 20^th respectively. So, it does seem a long shot for the Bafana Bafana team to do well and say, reach the semi-finals.

But there is a mystique about the South African Bafana Bafana team. Perhaps the same colossal strength of the South African people that lifted them up from apartheid will power them through their Group A first round matching. And too, the dollar factor is in itself a colossal motivating factor for the Bafana Bafana team. South Africa has invested $5,000,000,000 (3.5 billion British pounds) building stadiums, roads, and public transportation linkages. BBC’s sports editor David Bond reported in his blog on Tuesday that this World Cup will generate more money than any in the history of the event.

All that aside though, there is a certain euphoria and rush football fans across the globe get when the World Cup comes around. Maybe it is the breathtaking extraordinary moves on the football pitch by a Thierry Henry or a Ronaldo (who by the way has the record for the most World Cup goals with 15), or maybe it is just the jaw dropping spectacles  of the football stadiums built just for this event that comes around every four years. Either way, this World Cup gives me a special joy to know that it is being hosted in mother Africa.

One day, just maybe one day, we too will witness our beloved Belize in the World Cup.

And so back in 2008, after government had changed and Sr. Superintendent Chester Williams was telling the country that he was being set up by other high ranking members of the police department and politicians, it was kinda hard to swallow.  It did seem like a conspiracy theory to me, as I suppose most Belizeans, at the time. It seemed incredulous at the time that senior police officers who had a personal vendetta would be so consumed that they would frame Mr. Williams in the manner they did: getting a fellow police officer to give a statement stating that he witnessed Mr. Williams execute a man who was supposedly on the run. It did seem extraordinary for men who took an oath to maintain law and order, to go to such depths in the quest to jockey for power. Ah mean, that is the stuff that makes for an excellent Alfred Hitchcock suspense movie. We out here were not privy to what Mr. Williams or his lawyers or those police officers and politicians knew. So, as I said, most of us our here thought Mr. Williams’ was fielding a conspiracy theory at the time to save face as disciplinary actions were being taken against him, and he was being suspended. And most of us, naturally, did not believe his version at the time.

But it is said: truth crushed to the earth will one day rise again.

The full hundred in Mr. Williams’ ordeal gradually begun to unfold.

First, there was in May, 2008, the legal opinion of the then Solicitor General, Tanya Herwanger, on the merits (or rather demerits) of Mr. Williams’ case. She professionally and boldly wrote that the case against Mr. Williams was “fatally flawed”.  And more revealing, she wrote that the decision to suspend Chester Williams was “influenced by various interested parties.” These interested parties were listed as UDP Ministers Carlos Perdomo and John Saldivar, as well as the Commissioner of Police and the CEO in the Ministry of the Public Service. The Prime Minister was terribly vexed with the Solicitor General for her candour and  publicly scolded and embarrassed the woman. The Solicitor General’s legal opinion, naturally, had eyes popping open. How could it be that the government handpicked legal expert could be saying that government’s case was flawed, when, in March, 2008, the chilling and surreal allegations were made Chester Williams appeared to be a slum dunk case against him?

Then things really started looking more suspicious when later in December, 2008, the Belize Advisory Council vindicated Williams and ordered him reinstated as a Senior Superintendent. That again had eyes popping out. The case against Chester Williams begun to look indeed like a case of a framed cop as Chester had  put it when the wild allegations first started.

But Tuesday’s revelation by the Commissioner of Police definitely had to floor everyone who has been keeping track of the case. In its newscast on Tuesday, Channel5 ran an interview with Mr. Jefferies wherein the Commissioner of Police admitted that the Police Department has long known that the man Chester Williams is alleged to have killed is alive in the United States. The Commissioner went on to say that Belizean law enforcement officers are coordinating with their US counterparts to see the return of the man  to Belize to face charges against him.

This is an incredulous bit of information. Firstly, if the Police Department has had this information for some time, why have they not released it to the public? I recall they went out of the way to have a media trial of Mr. Williams. And many, if not all of us, bought into the hype. We had all convicted Chester a long time ago. But the more distressing thing about all this though is that Chester Williams was not fielding a conspiracy theory after all. Big man (as they say in the streets) as it now turns out, were indeed plotting and scheming and making very, very serious allegations against an individual, just because ah position.  Which makes me wonder, how many other citizens may not have been rung through the system out of malice, hate and vendetta? If the police could have done it to one of their own who wouldn’t they do it to?

Which finally brings me to this point. Belize City’s Deputy Mayor was on television the other night spouting a proposal to change our system to one in which those accused of crimes are presumed to be guilty and then they have to prove their innocence. He did say that the  idea was not “novel” or engineered by him; that it has been floating around out there. But when you put the Chester Williams’ case into perspective, you quickly realize that such a proposal could only bring more pain and suffering to the nation. Not a lot of our people will have the resources as a Chester Williams to prove what the public will chide as a conspiracy theory.

After taking us around his favourite thing (the mulberry bush) with his Sixth Constitutional Amendment Act, the Prime Minister now refuses to pass into law his much touted expanded Senate and recall of representative law.

Back in April, 2008, the Prime Minister beat his chest when introducing the then proposed constitutional amendments in the House of Representatives:  “These are splendid proposals that the government is introducing and I’m not blowing my own horn. This is the effort, this is the work of the government of Belize, the Cabinet. But the truth is that these are fantastic proposals by way of enshrining the reform agenda and I think all of us that are members of Cabinet, all of us that are members of this party, all of us that are members of the government of Belize can feel extremely pleased with the fact that we are delivering so early on this fundamental commitment to the people of Belize.”

But as Belizeans got to realize after the introduction of those proposals into the House of Representative, not all the proposals were “splendid” , fantastic” nor did they all  “enshrine the reform agenda”. Several of the proposals were in fact retrograde. Remember the proposal to lock up people indefinitely (euphemistically called preventative detention); to deny land owners their long established right to royalty in petroleum and minerals found on their land or the lack of job security for Court of Appeal judges? Through public agitation and public interest litigation in the courts of Belize, these proposals were stopped in their tracks.

But not the proposals for an expanded senate and a recall of representative law. Truth be told,  these were and are still “splendid proposals”.  There was no one across the country who complained about the proposal to enlarge the membership of the Senate to ensure that the Senators nominated by the Opposition and the non-governmental organizations together constitute the majority. Indeed, a Senate with such a composition would most certainly have seen government’s 2010-2011 budget voted against. The expanded senate proposal then is a good thing for democracy.

So too is the proposal for recall of representatives a “fantastic” proposal. The thrust of the proposal is that an elected representative would be able to be recalled before the expiry of his normal term of office. The process kicks in by way of a petition for the recall by the members of his constituents. Such a proposal again admittedly fosters democracy.

But splendid as they are- they are merely proposals still. The Prime Minister, a couple weeks back, in exercise of powers conferred on him, brought the Sixth Constitutional Amendment into law. He designated the 12^th April as the date the law was to come into effect. But he, most curiously, refused to bring into law these proposals for an expanded senate and recall of representatives.

It is really one of those things that make you go “Hmmmmmmmmmmmm!”

He, the Prime Minister, had repeatedly told the Belizean public and the NGOs that he wanted to bring into law the expanded senate and the recall of representative provisions but that his hands were tied because the Sixth Constitutional Amendment was tied up in court.  There are no pending cases in the courts of Belize regarding the Sixth Constitutional Amendment, so what now could be the reason why he doesn’t want the expanded senate and the recall of representatives law to come into effect?

But even that rationale so often given by the Prime Minister that the matter was tied up in court and so his hands were tied is now shown to have been hogwash. That he is now able to conveniently separate the proposals for an expanded senate and recall of representative from the rest of the Sixth Constitutional Amendment shows that he all along could have done this.  As far back as 2008, if he were sincere about enacting an expanded senate and recall of representative law, he could have separated these proposals and passed them separately in the House of Representative. There certainly would have been no dissent or opposition to this move. In fact, this is what the PUP had been demanding that the Prime Minister do from way back then.

But we out here know the real reason why the Prime Minister will never bring the expanded senate or the recall representative law into effect. He knows, firstly, that a flurry of recall petition would be thrown at his UDP representatives. His government would DEFINITELY NOT serve out its five years if this recall of representatives law were to come into force now. What, with this nationwide discontent with the UDP right now. He knows too that he would be in a position wherein none or very few of his legislations would be passed by a senate controlled by the opposition and non-governmental organizations. The NGO’s have shown, most vividly in the budget debate in the Senate, that it will not follow this government down the path of destruction where it seems intent on leading this country. Consequently, the Prime Minister knows too well that he will not be able to have his legislations and motions be rubber stamped in the Senate if the expanded senate were to come on stream. He then, as is his modus, merely tells the nation that he will not bring them into law. As he so arrogantly told the nation via Channel 7 back on March 24^th,  “ let them wait”.

The Prime Minister has taken us around a mulberry bush with his touted reform agenda. He hyped up and raised the expectation of just about every Belizean with this expanded senate and  recall of representatives proposal. All along he has been saying his hands are tied because the matter is in court. Now that that has been shown to have been a hogwash excuse, he has taken on his bully approach. To hell with all of you, he is saying; just wait until I am ready. Barrow is bogus; fi real.