REPORT #499 June 2002
BELIZEAN POLITICAL PHILOSPHY 102


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

The struggle in Belize to achieve consensual democracy on the style of a Republic is an old one in human history. The Irquois Indian Federation of the USA had one, on which the Founding Fathers of the USA modeled much of their Constitutional apparatus. Democratic measures in constitutional reform are usually a reaction to despotic autocratic tyranny and won through war.

There has in human nature, always arisen autocratic despots, warlords, Kings and dictators. The Alpha Male rule syndrom seems to be bred into our genes? One of the things that happens throughout history under consensual democracy, is a flowering of artists, philosphers and commerce. However, periods of consensual democracy are usually short. The barbarians from within and from outside, are always battering at the constitutional foundations of consensual democracy. History shows that tyranny is usually only overturned by violence and revolution. More often than not, humans only replace one tyranny with another.

The Alpha Male syndrom in CARICOM countries has been replaced by a pseudo democratic apparatus called a parliamentary rubber stamp, bi-cameral system of government. The new Kings and Royal Aristocracy are called a winning political party leader who takes the name of Prime Minister and the new aristocracy are winning party appointed cabinet ministers. For all the semantics, the way things work in practice has not changed for 6000 years. There are rulers and the ruled! Only in our Belizean Co-operatives do you get a glimpse of consensual democracy and how it could work in Belize as a governing system?

The fruits of victory from political campaigning under our autocratic system of government in Belize are much the same as always throughout human history. Land acquisition, punishment and bankrupting your political opposition. The open plunder through various schemes of ripping off government tax revenues. Forcing into exile those you wish to ruin, or acquire their assets. The subverting of the police and justice apparatus.

You could plunk Belize down into the 14th century, or the time of the ancient Greeks, both periods of political experimentation and just change the names of how things work and feel right at home. Our two major political parties are the new aristocracy. Or nowadays, we use the term, national political elite; to differentiate the class divisions.

One of the unique methods of replacing the political elite in Belize, occured after the last election. This was the offer of a GRATUITY equal to a year's pay and a LIFE TIME PENSION at half pay, for a ruling political elite, to quit forever as an upper class ruler. I never ran across that mechanism before in history, except perhaps the GRANTS issued to Aristocrats between 1343 and 1345 of the Florentines. The period didn't last of course and subsequent despots revoked the grants and they were forced into exile by the new despots.

Rulers or politicians, then as now; continue to promise one thing and deliver another! Our current autocratic despot, Said Musa, is a perfect example of this historical ethical duplicity through the ages. The lust for power at any cost is a firm character trait in ten percent of any human population.

Yet, for Belizean political philosphers, the tantalizing vision of a self reliant country, wealthy, with no poverty, in a new renaissance of art and commerce, remains only a dream; as our nation's human resources are thwarted and frustrated by the pyschological mechanisms of human nature responses in a tyranny of a winning one party ruler system, based on a five year cycle of plunder and mismanagment, dividing us into two classes of society. The rulers and the ruled!

A new election is coming! What a farce and a cruel joke!

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