By Colin Hyde

   Prrrrrp, game on, big respect to Jules Vasquez first, and to Mose Hyde second, for sticking like white on rice, like remora on shark, with the case of the smuggling of Joe Budna across the western border. I have my differences with these modern guys on a number of issues, but I’m not one to spoil a good thing:  I’m staying with their props for a job well done. In this saga, Louis Wade and his band, and G Mike Reid and Audrey on social media were no heroes. As for me and my comments, well, if you want to know what I think, I’d be pleased if you put me between the two.

  This latest play by the government is capitulation, admission that they can’t handle this. I think (I think) Mose made the point that we could be grateful that Budna didn’t end up in a shallow grave. They could easily have smuggled him across lines through back streets too, instead of giving a full play in front of the cameras, at the door mouth of the police station in Orange Walk Town.

   Now, there are wheels, and wheels within wheels, and wheels within the wheels within wheels. A Vasquez or a Mose could write a book with all the speculations. Me, I’m staying on the surface; I’m not digging under any rocks.

   Yes, the GoB effectively admitted that somewhere up there somebody absolutely messed up. I suspect the party or parties involved were of the view that moving Budna across the border was good riddance. Ah, Audrey, G Mike, and L Wade absolved the criminality involved, due to the immense sigh of relief that Belize was safer for our little boys. I say, if Budna is as bad as all the authorities make out, we shouldn’t be surprised if they commute his sentence over there and return him to the sender.

   I expect you remember Harper Lee’s much celebrated story, To Kill a Mockingbird. If you do, you will remember why white Boo Radley didn’t face the court/go to the gallows for causing/assisting the accidental death of the white guy who set out to harm the children of the white lawyer who defended the black guy. This Budna case, it seems partly self-serving, yes, and someone saw justification in the clandestine job.  

   I will say, in a way it’s an “All’s Well That Ends Well”, the “bad man” being back in jail serving his sentence, except that we don’t do things the way it was done, and those in authority should know that best. If it’s any consolation for those bent on punishment via an independent investigation, in case you missed it, the prize is in the title of this piece. In this case, the whole team gets the blame. Bah, those shitn PUPeez, out of the 26 of them they couldn’t find one hero to step up and take one for the gang. I say, when nobody guilty, everybody guilty. Who teef Budna? All a dehn, every jack man bohga in the blue shirts!

Urban and rural votes, Marshalleck on redistricting, the lawyers’ pay

   I will start off by saying again, that I find it a little surprising that some people don’t accept that people who live in a city are more attuned to the political workings of the country than people who live in rural areas. It is so that there are people who put their agenda before all others, and that might be the case here.

   I think that revolutions are likely to be fired up in rural areas only when there is poor land distribution, or famine caused by a stressed environment. Natural phenomena, a hurricane, for example, can put people who live in a city in dire straits, but it is a permanent state of people in a city that they are on edge. Living shoulder to shoulder, no elbow room — Braa, the human being wasn’t designed to live that way.

   Food is the number one need of all animals, and in a capitalist country it’s a constant worry for a high percentage of people living in a city. Capitalist leaders like it that way. They say it keeps people nervous about their future, and people in that state are more productive. Another factor to consider when comparing urban and rural is that, where people are concentrated (cities and towns) are fertile grounds for the media. The most popular media are those that whip up the emotions of people to fight the many good causes.

   All that said, I don’t advocate that an urban vote should be worth more than one in rural areas. I am saying that if there is an imbalance, it should lean toward the areas where people are concentrated in small spaces. 

   If you look at Belize, by far the toughest place to live is Belize City. I would lump BMP, Orange Walk Town, and San Ignacio/Santa Elena together, not necessarily in the order of toughest. My nose says San Pedro Town is becoming a tough place. Continuing in the world of towns, I would put PG as the least stressful place to live. But it would be more stressful than our villages.

   Repeating myself from previous pieces, the electoral districts that are mal-apportioned have the highest number of new Belizeans (people who have come to live here in the last forty years), and their children, second generation Belizeans. Again, I will congratulate new Belizeans for not getting too excited about the redistricting drive. Maybe it’s because they come from countries that have been independent longer than we have, and so they know better than we do about how the world works. Or, as we’ve discussed before, they are just plenty grateful to be a part of the most wonderful country on earth.

   It’s always good to know what other people in the world are doing. It should be of interest to us what the main political parties in the UK are proposing to handle their immigration issues. Immigration affects the ballot; let’s not hide our heads in the sand about that. The pundit who said that the four countries in the Caribbean that decided on free movement all have Labor parties in government, and come election time people will move around to shore up Labor support so they get over, well, he is not alone in that kind of thinking, though that one is a kind of stretch.

   Checking in on the UK again, you bet the political parties there are interested in the voting patterns of immigrants who become citizens. Leaping across the Atlantic, the Republican Party in the US is motivated to send people home because they feel that folk from the other Americas and the Caribbean who gain citizenship will vote for the party of the Democrats. It is so that non-white people in the US are more likely to vote Democrat. Taking the short trip back to the UK, the Labour Party there wants immigrants to wait longer than five years before they are able to move toward citizenship.

   In his extremely informative piece on the redistricting thing here, Attorney Marshalleck said, “The end of malapportionment obviously lies not only in the benevolence of our political leaders, (so we must choose them wisely), but in the amendment of the provisions of the Belize Constitution to redefine the mechanism governing redistricting to permit prospective enforcement”; and he said we are not alone in wanting to see a more balanced vote. He said, “Former president Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder have joined forces in the creation of the National Redistricting Commission in the United States of America. The Commission advocates for law reform to address malapportionment of electoral divisions. They argue that you cannot put politicians in charge of choosing who their voters will be. They insist that the power to redistrict should be conferred on independent commissions away from politicians.”

   Someone will have to ask Henry Charles how the promise in Plan Belize 1.0 to get more independent input in the management of our electoral process, got shelved. I’m daam sure I read all about that, but I can’t find that manifesto on the Google anymore.  

   Closing out here, absolutely, what the lawyers got to defend the government’s right to call the election should be public knowledge. The Ombudsman ordered that that information be divulged, and the PM said he doesn’t know if he has that authority. Well then, we’ve got an AG; come on Anthony, throw your weight behind the unsealing of the expenditure. Now, if they give us back our money and declare that it was all gratis, my vote will go by the box that says, satisfied with that. Lucky lawyers, we have so many other fish to fry.