Moya: Barrow’s Blunt Instrument

Less you think that we’re just “beating up” on Belize City’s Mayor Zenaida Moya, please remember we were the ones who told you that “We noh wa’an Zenaida, yu noh wan’ anh nieda!” in the song and dance of the 2006 Municipal Elections campaign. Those fateful words then seem so much more prophetic now.

Belize’s political history is replete with a pantheon of characters whose personalities, styles and combination of charisma and lack of proper deportment, have made them near legends, and even the basis of myth. Madam Moya has already secured entry into this select club, and the only question is where among the “toppa-toppa” she will end up. Her mistakes, gaffes, and faux-pas, due to immaturity, lack of emotional control, debatable intellectual capacity, and shallowness is a tragicomically being played out both nationally and internationally. Although we know the joke is ultimately on all of us, for sure Dean Oliver is not laughing himself, even to crocodile tears.

Barrow wishes he didn’t know now what he did not know then.  A foolish thought for him since all he has to do is look beyond the lunatic extremists in his national councils’ cabals to realize that it is he who has chosen to surround himself with persons who are walking stereotypes and 3D caricatures. Despite his experience as a former Foreign Minister, Barrow has regularly, reflexively if you will, eschewed the diplomat for the warlord. Following the dismal failure of his 2003 general elections campaign, Barrow replaced high-mindedness with this low-brow strategy of violence and intimidation.

This is the mark of desperation. 2008 will become a crisis of confidence for Barrow. Beyond the trappings of his own articulate-ness, there is no one else in the UDP who can speak principally for his party with tact and discretion. In fact at times it seems there is no one else that is a self-identified supporter who can even act with tact and discretion. It was near brilliant conception on his part, I presume, when the plot to subvert the congress of trade unions and the majority business representative organization was hatched and implemented, and the surrogate-stooge ACB was created principally by his former wife.

When Barrow loses in 2008 he will walk away, regretful and bitter, a man alone with the now demons of what might have been. Who is Dean Oliver Barrow, the man desperate to be king? In this run up to the decision, what do you really know about Dean O? He is desperate, he is arrogant and he is ultimately a loser- that will be proved emphatically in the up coming General Elections.