Belize DEMOCRACY in danger!

BELIZE GOVERNMENT MEETS CONSIDERABLE PUBLIC DISATISFACTION WITH THE "Elected ruling party dictatorship management system in the British Colonial Parliamentary system, was met this past week over several public issues of disagreement.

It was amazing the number of ordinary citizens on the ground being interviewed by television media reporters, that uttered the same complaint. They want a PARTICIPATORY GOVERNMENT, they want the ELECTED 5 YEAR party DICTATORSHIP turned from a RULING MENTALITY to a MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE TYPE OF SYSTEM. How to achieve that is the question.

Several tumultuous events happened over the past two weeks, to place the Cabinet of the political party GURUS, acting as Ministers, against the sentiments of the public voters.

This endless fight goes on today with a new generation of CIVIL ACTIVISTS arguing about political policies and actions, contrary to what the political party wants to do. We could call them the DON QUIXOTE society. In each generation there are those that object to certain actions of the government of the day. Debate and the courts have become more the NORM in our society today, to settle differences of opinion on what the government is doing and how they are doing it.

Today´s generation of DON QUIXOTE activists, for FREEDOM and DEBATE are Yolanda Shackron, Anthony Sylvester, Audry Matura-Shepherd are the most prominent, but it is amazing how many ordinary citizens are also activists and unafraid to be vocal on policy issues today.

The ruling political UDP party under it´s party leader, Prime Minister, Dean Barrow has a REPORT CARD approval rating of 61%. So everything they are doing is generally meeting with approval a little above the norm. Mostly when the UDP concentrate on infra-structure issues. On the other hand, the current sequence of disasters for political policies are centered around the Prime Minister himself, speaking with FORKED TONGUE and Doug Singh, Cabinet Minister of Police, of the security forces. Dough Singh generally has a high approval rating, he is a smooth, diplomatic talker. But recently he has shown himself to be wrong ( mostly on GSU protocols and usage ) and nothing apparently will change his mind. It is when he defends indefensible positions of violence with the security forces under his command, that the voters find offensive.
In Prime Minister Barrow´s, as acting ALI BABA and his 40 thieves,( his political party ) controlling the government of Belize through the Cabinet posts, that he makes. The media are agruing, he spèaks with FORKED TONGUE, we mean that the weekend newspapers are covering in detail, three recent public issues of disatisfaction with his elected dictatorial government. The Prime Minister is always insistant that he will only ACT WITHIN THE LEGAL SYSTEM. Unfortunately he doesn´t, and wide and sundry reporting show him up for being a liar.
In the one case, the recent night time raid on a small shanty town of squatters, and tearing down of their houses, was not done legally, but by brute force reminiscent of what they do in Zimbabwe, or under Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The lawyers have pointed out and the reports have verified, the night time attack on the shanty town ( about 15 families of squatters on government land ) was illegal. Their goods were thrown onto the ground and they were rousted out in the night and their buildings torn down. The Prime Minister points out in the Reporter newspaper, that" what was done, had to be done" as quoted.
The legal activists point out that there was nothing legal about it, but a show of police backed wrecking gangs with hand tools and BRUTE FORCE. No LEGAL PROCEDURES were followed. No Court Orders taken out and the police were used as a heavy bullying force illegally, in a manner most cruel in a civil dispute. A role the police were acting as criminals that was not a criminal activity, but were acting as criminal enforcers. yet, the Prime Minister keeps harping on the sanctity of the law and his obeying lawful ways. THE PUBLIC ARE HOLDING HIM TO ACCOUNT AND SHOUTING PURE BULLSHIT ON HIS PART
It is apparent, that the Prime Minister is legal when he wants to blame vocal activists and opposition against him, but illegal when he wants to get his own way. In other words, he speaks with FORKED TONGUE. The public recognizes this self serving opinion of himself and the newspapers are full of an in depth analysis of his actions and personal motivations. Democracy is said to be a messy system and the last two weeks it sure has been so.
Another issue was the bus dispute still ongoing. The bus system is in a hostile takeover situation, agrravated by an incompetent Transportation bureaucracy, led by an incompetent Cabinet Minister. The quarrel and verdict about that is not settled yet, but the weekend media did some good in depth investigative reporting on the dispute and motivations of the players involved for a fixed small commercial bus market share system, over which the fighting is ensuing.
The third issue was a night time raid on a home by a military Gang Suppression Unit, used in a raid reminiscent of the FBI attacks on known Black Panther groups in the 1960´s and 1970´s in the USA. For what was supposed to be a normal search of a home for illegal firearms and drugs ( a euphinism for political persecution by security forces under the control of Cabinet Minister of Police and Security, Doug Singh ), ordinarily done in the plain light of daytime, was done at night unnecessarily, and ended up in a firefight as the HOMEOWNER defended his family and home against unbelievable night time gangsters, which in the end turned out to be a paramilitary unit of the security forces not intended for such soft targets. The security forces jailed the family and they are still in jail, but an enterprising freedom fighter lawyer name Anthony Sylvester let them use his cell phone from the prison system, to be interviewed by the media and this let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. Their side of the operation was never intended by the political security system to be heard this early in the game of political persecution. Lawyer Anthony Sylvester is now persona non grata. It is apparent none of these events done by an elected dictatorship, 5 year system will pass muster in a court of law, by jury. There will be a lot of expense and inconvenience caused by a badly operating political ruling system though, on the citizens involved. Scars and trauma that will last a life time. It is the knowledge that the government actions were both improper, or illegal and the corrections that need to be made in operational protocols of the security forces; that have the DON QUIXOTE society of public activists and voters in general, very nervous. Currently we have the jury system and if these injustices can happen in our democracy and though taking two or three years to expensively wind their way through the court system and vindicate the victims, the Prime Minister and his elected political party dictatorship is going to pass laws SOON, eliminating the jury system and go to a single judge system, reminiscent of legal system under the NAZI party in Germany prior to World War 2.
The progression of events is becoming more alarming to all the voters and citizens and how to combat what seems a slippery path to totalitarinism is the current emphasis on both TV reporting and in the newspapers, as the populace fight for control of the government management system here is Belize. The Amandala newspaper this weekend ran a piece on Dictator Trujillo assassination over in the Dolminican Republic, to remind the voters of what can happen and make them think about the motivations of this Prime Minister in Belize.
The oft quoted thought that DEMOCRACY is not the best system, but is the messiest, but BEST system tried so far, has certainly been proven over the last two weeks. It can get messier and that is what is worrying all the voters.