Realizing Pothole Possibilities

I must congratulate those who've made our fair city what she is today. I refer of course, to Belize City, which has never before looked the way it does now –well, not since the streets were first paved, anyway. I congratulate our municipal leaders, because in its current condition, this city presents tremendous opportunities.

“But the streets,” you cry. “The streets are a complete mess!”

Okay, yes, I’ll concede that the streets are a mess. But seriously, we’ve had massive flooding in the districts, and obviously these floods have destroyed our city streets –personally, I blame the Cayo flood. And anyway, while you’re so focused on the potholes, you’re forgetting that we have two and a half new roundabouts to celebrate about. Be honest, when you’re trying to negotiate those roundabouts, heart in throat, trying not to get broadsided by a taxi driver, you forget all about the potholes, right? Thought so.

Personally, I think The Hans and Nandini Bhojwani Foundation, whatever that is, deserves our profound gratitude for making us forget our lesser problems as we negotiate their obstacle course. I for one would like the Foundation’s address so that I may personally share my feelings on the matter. I'm also depressed when I realize that traffic authorities in New Zealand will never know how much their inspiration affected our stress levels.

However, I digress from the main point of this article. I had started by saying that the current state of the city presents tremendous opportunities. No, you short-sighted today-thinkers, I’m not talking about road contracts to friendly contractors; that’s way too short-term and much too obvious. I’m talking about far deeper (if you’ll pardon my pun) options for commercial gain.

You see, the other day, my car fell into a pothole. I had a lot of time to think while I waited to be rescued. It was, after all, still daytime and the pothole was so deep that no one could hear the car horn or my calls for help. Thank heaven that when it got dark I was able to turn on the car’s lights, and a passerby saw the glow and called for rescue.

While I sat on the edge waiting for the crane to haul out the tow truck that fell in while trying to pull out my car, I made a few notes recording my epiphany. I hope that someone will forward these ideas to Her Lordship so that she can use them to raise a bit more revenue for the city:

1. Use the city streets for vehicle testing. I think that major auto companies worldwide can send their SUV prototypes here for road tests. If no more than five or ten pieces fall off a vehicle during a vigorous drive through the city (which must include a drive at moderate speed down Albert and up Regent Streets), and as long as one of those pieces isn't the engine, the auto company can assume that their prototype can go into production and be marketed as rugged enough for any environment.
   
2. Ditto for the tire manufacturers. The standards here would be a bit different, of course. I’d suggest that if only one tire blows out during a drive down those same streets, that’d be success in my book. However, it’ll be up to the engineers to decide if that’s a high enough success measure.
   
3. Consider the possibilities for oil exploration. I haven’t had a chance to research it, but I don’t recall hearing that the government sold exploration rights for Belize City. Now I don’t know that there’s any indication that oil deposits lie below the city, but it occurs to me that some potholes are sufficiently deep that less drilling would be required. So while there mightn’t be any oil, the bean counters should appreciate that exploration costs would certainly be considerably less than drilling inland, even if that’s where the oil actually is.
   
4. Many major cities worldwide contract with large studios to film movies on location in their city. Belize City has been one of these locations in the past, but no one has tried to attract one of these studios to Belize in quite some time. I think it’s time to revisit this income opportunity, and I’m sure that we can jumpstart the whole thing if we can find and attract a studio planning to film a remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Now that you’ve read this through, and your brain is spinning with the possibilities, I’m sure you too have your ideas. Feel free to submit them, either by clicking ‘comment’ at the end of this article if you’re reading it online, or if you’re reading this by e-mail, send that comment in to belizebeliever@gmail.com. The most creative submission gets to name a pothole of their choice, courtesy of the Belize City Council.

...The Harder We Fall

Well, the 2008 Corruption Perception Index is out, and the big news is…we dropped again! In just three years, our fall from grace has taken us from 66 to 99 to 109 in the number rankings. The optimists amongst us would point out that whereas we slid 33 points in 2007, at least we only slid 10 points this year. Well hurray for us then, Mr Optimist. I’d go for a drink to celebrate, but my celebratory liquor budget is pretty tight, and besides, I’m a little nervous that if I go out I might get jacked.


Clearly, Belize’s image out there could use a generous coating of the strongest deodorant. It really isn’t fair to blame Transparency International or the other star of the September Celebrations, Ross Kemp, for this. If your neighbor comes over to visit and then tells everyone about your filthy house, the worst you can say about her is that she’s a gossip, right? So what do we do about all this gossip? How do we clean our house so that our rankings climb back up the scale for next year?

I’d start by suggesting that this government set the pace for shutting down the negative buzz by aggressively taking matters in hand. Our current leaders should loudly and visibly shut down cronyism and arrest anyone attempting to offer bribes. Start by setting a few examples and everybody else will fall into line in a hurry. Insist that audits be carried out in a timely manner for both Central Government and the municipal authorities, and act on any irregularities that these audits uncover. ACB issued a release insisting on the municipal audits –I look forward to the results, as well as the results of the results, you get what I’m saying?

Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition could even make this into a bipartisan effort by endorsing whatever actions GOB takes, and let me push things here by using this phrase: “in a mature fashion.” The kind of things I’d love to see the Opposition support include the arrest of anyone trying to bribe a government official, including police officers. Everybody’d have to support the arrest of those accepting the bribes too, or else it just wouldn’t be fair.

Just check out the top five countries on the CPI. The thing I think they have in common is that they attempt to give their citizens a lifestyle that neither forces nor persuades them into corruption, backed up by a set of laws that really motivate people to stay on the straight and narrow path. And between you and me, I don’t think a Singapore prison is nearly as nice as Kolbe. We should learn from this.

Maybe it’d be easier just to bribe Transparency International.

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A Solution to Our Crime Problem

Tonight the country of Belize was treated to an episode of Ross Kemp on Gangs filmed mainly in Belize City. Objectively speaking, the show was a mixture of truth and self-serving exaggeration, with a colorful overlay of sensationalistic crap. This is to be expected, but let’s not lose the main point, which is the fact that we really do have a gang problem. We also have a weapons problem, an explosives problem, a drug problem, a crime problem, and a full assortment of sexual problems. Of late, you can even add the problem of constantly disappearing intransit ‘pharmaceuticals’ to this ever-growing list.

Fear not however, this evening’s news reminded us that the authorities are vigorously attacking the [insert name here] situation. They have pulled together all the necessary resources, asserted themselves and…held a press conference! Yes, that’s right, the new head-on method for attacking these problems is to have press conferences wherein senior law enforcement officials explain what they are doing and, uh, why they can’t quite reach that elusive goal of solving The Problem of the Day.

Let’s be fair though, the authorities can't solve all these problems by themselves, can they? If they could, then the problems would hardly be worth the price of Ross Kemp’s plane ticket. These problems won’t be solved until we can all pull together as a community and put up a unified front against crime. Bringing us together will, I realize, require truly strong, moral and upstanding leadership.

We need the kind of credible, trustworthy, nonpolitical leadership we’ve been conditioned to expect from our church leaders. That's why I’m proud to see the Council of Churches speaking up. They even issued a press release recently. In this release, they decried, in the strongest possible terms, the government’s plan to...have the Independence Day parade on, of all days, Independence Day! Yes, this sort of infringement on our collective morals had to be roundly condemned lest it damn our souls for all eternity.

Now, I’m sure that having achieved victory in this major and potentially catastrophic issue, our newly emboldened church leaders will be able to move quickly past it in order to focus on the lesser issues of murder, robbery and general mayhem ensuing in our streets.

I look forward to their press conference.

Requiem for a Bygone Era

On Saturday 6th September, Carnival Day, Belize was forced to bid farewell to the peaceful stage of her development. Whereas before we were treated to occasional scenes of gratuitous violence in between updates of Zenaida's latest hijinks, and whereas we have heard of grenades on the street before, this was an entirely new level of horror.

The fact that someone thought it a good idea to toss a grenade into crowds of parents and children gathered to watch a parade speaks to the kind of monster our culture has unknowingly nurtured. And sadly, our forces are ill-equipped to deal with this new order of battle. After all, we did not realize these possibilities, did we?

Before Carnival Day and what might have been, we still retained a small portion of the innocence we once had in abundance. We still had a little faith left. But to hear our leaders and security forces speak of doing bomb sweeps prior to an event, to hear them mention what will have to be done for parade security, leaves a sadness, a kind of weariness, as we mourn for what did die on Saturday.

We all used to be able to brag about how safe Belize was, how our leaders could travel without bodyguards, how we didn't have the problems of other nations. Well, now we do.


So what next?

Salute to the 210th Tenth

Four days from today we’ll be celebrating the 210th Anniversary of the Battle of St George’s Caye. I’ll be celebrating it even if you aren’t, because to me it’s not a red or a blue holiday; it’s not a black or white holiday. In my humble opinion, labeling it as some sort of tacit endorsement of colonialism and slavery is narrow-minded in the extreme.

To deny that the battle happened because those who fought didn’t meet certain criteria and because you hate the British who are long gone is, in a word, pathetic. Somebody said in the papers the other day that it’s bogus because it was a white man’s fight. I’d like to personally call that writer a racist, brain-damaged idiot. The proper way to look at it is thus, if nothing happened then, would we be speaking English now? For sure there would be no Guatemalan dispute because we’d already have Guatemalan passports. Before you decide that’s a good idea, let me point out that generally speaking the Latinos don’t have the best record for liking us ‘people of colour.’

A few more than two hundred and ten years ago (I’m ashamed to admit I don’t remember exactly when) a public meeting was held where those present discussed and voted on whether to remain in this settlement and fight to keep it or abandon it to the Spaniards. The vote to stay was the winner because of some black folk named Flowers who came in to Belize Town from Flowers Bank for the meeting and voted to stay –their vote put it over the top. I hope that Flowers’ descendants of today are aware and proud of their ancestors’ active role in Belizean history.

As a direct result of that vote, when the Spaniards anchored their ships off our shores a year or two later we were ready, and we repelled them. There is no shame in having had a British warship there to help, just as there is no shame in the notion that there was no wholesale slaughter of our people. The former was their duty and the latter should be our pride. The British warship did not and could not repel the Spaniards on its own, nor does the fact that the two opponents did not line off against each other across a battlefield, point muskets and shoot at each other mean that nothing happened.

The thing is, you have people here who are traitors to Belize even as they wrap themselves in our flag. They don’t want us to have pride in our heritage because that would make us proud and strong. National pride gives us self-pride, a sense of identity, and that’s dangerous to people who want to enslave our minds and keep us down. So next time you hear someone sounding off like that brain-damaged racist, please point out to him/her that they are sounding off in English, which seems to underscore the silliness of their denial. They should be ashamed to call themselves Belizeans.

The Mark of Z

I have to hand it to Z, she really has made people pay attention. Never has municipal politics been so interesting, not even when the last mayor was accused of bouncing checks, etc. Here we have a sitting mayor accused of malfeasance, misappropriation of funds and other juicy things, like awarding contracts to family and friends. The remarkable thing about all these revelations is that nobody really looks good at the end of it all, not even her accusers. I think all that this feuding has done is to underscore the mediocrity of today’s Belizean politician.

Now, we haven’t heard all of it, I’m sure, not by a long shot. But so far what we have is a mediocre City Councillor making accusations, some of which have now been backed up ‘anonymously,’ while some have yet to be proven. On the other side, we have a globe-trotting Mayor, supported by her globe-trotting D.J. consort, claiming innocence and hurt feelings…and denigrating that Councilor’s psychological condition as her defense. Crazy or not, who cares? This is truly delicious fodder for us newshounds.

Now, questions I have for the media would include: who pays for her trips, does she travel coach or business class, does Dalla really go with her on every trip, is every trip absolutely necessary? Obviously the New Zealand one paid for itself because it inspired her to build roundabouts all over the city, thereby causing hitherto unheard-of traffic jams. In the end, I’m not sure what other accomplishments she can claim, but certainly we who drive past those roundabouts every day will forever remember her.

The opposition should be thoroughly embarrassed that they cannot yet produce a single worthwhile candidate to run against Z and her cronies. The ruling party should also be embarrassed about the fact that almost none of their candidates are outstanding citizens, and that in fact some of them are, to put it kindly, total opportunists.

Time to wake up, people! As our leadership goes, so do we. Therefore, Z, her cronies and her opponents are all reflections of what Belize has become. We turn the tide only if we demand better.

Time For A Hangin'

Greg Casildo was an animal. Oops, that was offensive and I apologize to all furry, four-legged creatures out there. Anyway, I have nothing nice to say about Casildo and think that the police need make no apologies for doing their jobs this one time. They exchanged gunfire with a dangerous criminal who has brutally and casually taken lives, and yes, in their place I would shoot to kill too.

Let me explain my point of view here, and it’s a simple one. I think the Old Testament had a point with this ‘eye for an eye’ business. If you take a human life, you ought to be ready to give yours in exchange. No, I’m not talking about a car accident or something like that. There is a price to be paid whenever you take a human life, but when you deliberately do so, you imply through your actions that life is cheap. Ergo, you should not break a sweat about giving up your life either. And tell your weeping relatives that they contributed to your downfall, okay? They who benefited from your drug dealing, didn’t attempt to curb your violent nature, wouldn’t accept that there was a serious evil streak in there somewhere; they are as guilty as you. They can keep their crocodile tears to themselves. Better their pain than that of victims’ families.

The problem I find with today’s Belize is that the breaking of laws has no consequences, or it has the wrong ones. You run up-stop in your car, and you might find a police car doing the same thing right in front of you. That cop has lost the right to tell you what to do, right? So you run up-stop whenever you feel like it. You break the speed limit, who’s going to stop you? There you’ll find a Minister’s vehicle overtaking you. Sooo…he races up to Belmopan, passes a law or two to justify his presence there, but he doesn’t have to abide by the law he made, yet he expects you to do so. Oh by the way, don’t get me started on the damned red plates again –if ever a law was dashed to pieces on the rocks of arrogance, it’s the law regarding license plate colors.

Continuing my original train of thought though, if you litter, who cares? If you smuggle Johnny Black or a couple Bensons, so what? Odds are, those who ought to enforce these laws have lost their moral authority to tell you anything, so they can’t enforce them, right? Ever checked what liquor your ministers drink, what cigarettes they smoke? Moral authority gaan, mi bredda!

So the little things become big things, and you commit a murder knowing full well you’ll never be hanged, and if you’re rich enough, cops will develop amnesia for you, witnesses will have laryngitis, and you’ll not see too much time in jail, if any at all. Hell, if you go ‘da back,’ your life ain’t all that rough anyway. Here’s the hint: just pretend a little humility, say ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ every so often when the Big Boss is in earshot and he’ll go to the hilt for you, battle for early release, you know? Yeah, you’re penned up, but you get three squares, a turn in the air-conditioned computer lab if you play your cards right, and you can maybe even run a business on the side, as long as you cut the guards in on a percentage of the gig.

You might have figured out by now that I’m writing this because I'm angry. Last night, a very nice lady was beaten to death in her own home, the latest of too many horrific murders. Her two little girls are left with serious physical and mental trauma. Tell me, where’s their justice?

Prime Minister, Minister, Attorney General, National Security CEO, DPP, ComPol, you’ve lost every battle so far simply by not showing up to fight. Unless you wake up and get serious, you’re about to lose the war; the body count is piling up on the wrong side. And don’t quote stats back at me, neither I nor the family of Sandra Ruiz are interested. Oh, don’t wave that Preventative Detention flag at me either, you can accomplish the necessary without it, if you’re prepared to crack down and enforce the laws we already have, up to and including hanging. Let me make it simple for you: if people begin to fear that breaking laws have real and serious consequences, we’ll be making progress.

Want me to print it on a red license plate for you?