REPORT #376 August 2000
PRESIDENT CLINTON GIVES A LESSON TO NIGERIA IN A SPEECH ON FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS OF DEMOCRACY. HE SHOULD COME TO BELIZE AND GIVE THE SAME SPEECH. WE NEED IT!


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

Nigeria is supposed to be coming from a dictatorship into a democracy. You can take that with a grain of salt. But our fellow commonwealth member did get a speech from President Clinton on his travels, that our PUP and UDP politicians need to hear and act upon also.

Clinton told the people in Nigeria and I hope our UDP and PUP aspiring elected dictators are listening, that the Legislature and the Senate are supposed to be a check and balance on Executive Authority!

Unfortunately, in Belize as in Nigeria, the legislature is a political party rubber stamp, winner take all dictatorship. The Senate in Belize is also a sham, in that it is appointed people and not elected. There certainly is no check and balance against executive authority in Belize. If there had been, we would never have had the miserable Mollejon Hydro Dam contract that Ralph Fonseca made. There would have been an open debate on policy before hand.

Barry Bowen's ( another townie ) self serving seditious talk aside, he and like minded folk don't want democracy in Belize! Nor apparently do the townies who aspire to political office as a job market and security blanket. It would seem from the opposition and open debate on the Chalillo Dam project and Ralph Fonseca's misguided ideas and (hiccup!) leadership, coupled with the antiquated ideas of a fellow traveler in Barry Bowen; that the only check and balance to executive authority and rampant political connections in Belize are the NGO's and the environmentalists. It would seem, that Belize is fortunate by golly, to have interested people in these NGO's and environmentalists to provide a missing CHECK AND BALANCE to uncontrolled Executive Power and a nonsense sham appointed brown nosing, pre-paid bought Senate and rubber stamp political party controlled Legislature.

Clinton went on to tell the Nigerians, and he should come to Belize and explain it to hard heads like Fonseca, Hall and Bowen; that a political culture which welcomes spirited debate without letting politics become a blood sport is one of the basic building blocks of the foundation of democracy.

Politics is certainly a blood sport in Belize. Nor is there any check and balance on the Executive! So much for our vaunted political party hypocritical propagandizing about democracy. And thanks be to God for the opposition in the NGO's and among the other groups like the environmentalists who are providing what little debate and soul searching "check and balance" we have in Belize.

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