When the House of Representatives meets this week to debate the National Budget tabled two weeks ago by the UDP Prime Minister Dean Barrow, it will be akin to a contentious special shareholders meeting, with the PUP Opposition aghast at the deterioration in the public, private and human assets of our nation while the UDP managers are certain to display the arrogance and contempt of a self-conscious Receiver. After all, in their almost fourteen months in office, UDP policies and programs are, with few exceptions, pursued with the caution and suspicion of a self-appointed, know-it-all Receiver.

To be clear, the Prime Minister did NOT inherit a public estate in receivership; rather, he was elected on the premise, on the propaganda platform, that the nation’s state of affairs was in such dire straits that only the economic witch doctor, Manuel Esquivel and his phalanx of conservative financial advisors could remedy the alleged fiscal convulsions by applying their brand of shock therapy to the patient. In reality, when the UDP arrived in Belmopan, the economy was growing at the healthy rate, hundreds of millions in bilateral and multilateral financing had been secured and a progressive reform agenda, initiated as far back as 2005, had intensified. In fact, the first UDP Budget proposed an overall surplus, based largely on the financing that was in the PUP pipeline.

For any process of development, there is a period when the endeavor is most vulnerable. For the unborn child, it’s during the first trimester of pregnancy; for an industry, for example, tourism, it’s during the high season when a majority of visitors provide the bulk of the sector’s annual revenues; and for our young Belizean democracy, still in the cradle of development, our most vulnerable time is now, during these next three, election-free years of ‘free rein’ for the UDP.

It would be dramatically out of character for PM Barrow and the UDP to consider the results of the recent Municipal Elections anything other than an unexpected, second honeymoon during which their excesses will be overlooked. The initial proof of this perception was unwrapped this week, with the unceremonious expulsion of Hon. Marcel Cardona from the Cabinet and with the attempt by the Attorney General’s Ministry to co-opt the independent office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Ms. Mathilda Berry

The event was sponsored by the PUP Secretariat.

Ms. Berry cannot walk and has been confined to a wheel chair. But she was still able to smile and show her appreciation for the attention she was getting.

Anwar Barrow

For many months now, it has been rumored that the UDP government plans to privatize the boledo operations in the country. With the recent public embrace between the ‘Chinese Mafia’ and the UDP, reports to the Belize Times are that these discussions have taken on a new level of seriousness. Draft agreements have been prepared and it is only a matter of deciding on the public relations course.

In many instances, the government is in fact, losing revenues from boledo since operators falsify the boledo books which are supposed to record their sales. In other instances, no books are used at all. Already, most vendors are Chinese and so the likely UDP spin is that the Chinese control this industry already so why not privatize it entirely. Like the casino operations, the boledo profits are whizzing out of the country and into foreign bank accounts.