Amandala

2010 was a significant year for Belize. Belize City (along with much of Central Belize, all the way through Belmopan) took its first direct hit from a major hurricane in almost half a century (Hurricane Richard), and murder rates reached an all-time high. But Belizean Dorian Villafranco, 17, brought good news home recently by excelling in regional examinations. He scored a record 15 Grade I’s in the 2010 Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC) examinations.
  
Perhaps the most heartbreaking tragedy of the year was the April 8 death of retired Police Sergeant Ranalda Jean Morgan, 55, who drowned in a failed but heroic attempt to save the lives of her three grandchildren at a pond at Mile 8 on the Western Highway. The children were Miesha, 11, Maurice, 8, and Micah, 6. Their 5-year-old sibling, Michael, was the only one to escape the tragedy alive.
  
Among the prominent Belizeans to pass during 2010 weremusicians Wilfred Peters and Frankie Rhys, radio personalities Mike Nicholson and Adrian Harris, TV journalist Keith Swift, cañero activist and credit union visionary Vicente Canul, basketball star Aubrey Lopez, cyclist Elbert Pope, and beverage magnate Barry Bowen.
  
Also, Belizean-American Marion Jones attempted a publicity comeback with her new book, On The Right Track. And guess what – Belizeans have finally begun to learn of the wealth untold of which they sing in the National Anthem: It was announced this year that Belize has gold, silver and lead; and government experts say offshore petroleum potential is valued at nearly BZ$2 billion a year. However, there are mixed feelings over that declaration in light of the British Petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico—the kind of disaster that many Belizeans fear will be inevitably unleashed offshore of Belize should the country venture into offshore drilling, causing irreversible devastation to the Belize Barrier Reef.
  
In the first edition of Amandala for 2010, the featured headline article was captioned: “Gold, silver, lead at Chiquibul”. Chiquibul is prized national lands, set aside for conservation purposes, but pillaged in unchecked incursions from next-door Guatemala.
  
While there seem to be prospects for new industries based on the harvesting of recently discovered resources in Belize, two of our fundamental industries which have shaped a large part of our history and culture experienced considerable difficulties: Belize’s major agricultural sectors—sugar and citrus—faced milestone challenges in 2010.
  
Some key Belizean organizations also agitated for improvements in various areas of concern. The trade unions unsuccessfully lobbied the Government of Belize for an overdue salary adjustment. Notwithstanding union strong talk, Prime Minister Barrow said, “No!” In February 2010, he told Belizeans that this would be the hardest year in the term of his administration, and they would have to make some sacrifices.
  
Also at odds with the Government of Belize were the Maya of Toledo, who scored a historic victory in the Belize Supreme Court when former Chief Justice Dr. Abdulai Conteh declared that customary land rights exist in both Toledo and Stann Creek. However, litigation continues as the case proceeds to an appeal.
  
Although the national issues that came to the fore in 2010 were broad and varied—ranging from continued debate on Belize-Guatemala border issues and talks of taking the dispute to the International Court of Justice, to calls for an investigation into petroleum revenues — there was one issue that remained front and center for all of 2010: CRIME.
  
Even as 2010 expires, security is undoubtedly the biggest concern in The Jewel. The homicide rate has surpassed the 2008 record of 103; the number has now shot past 130—a staggering increase of more than 20% over 2008, and more than 34% over 2009.
  
The story is in more than the bare numbers. Innocent children, such as Marquis Mahler and Eyannie Nunez, both 8, fell victims to savage gun violence; an attorney and his wife, Richard and Maria Stuart, were victims of a heinous double murder inside their Belize City home; Aubrey Lopez, basketball icon and the son of Belmopan mayor Simeon Lopez, was gunned down on the streets of Belize City. The Prime Minister’s law office was the target of an unprecedented attack in mid-April with either gunshots or a projectile—there was no final confirmation to the press on exactly what was fired at the building and there have been no arrests. Weeks later, in May, an attempt was made on the life of Barrow’s law partner, Rodwell Williams, inside the parking lot.
  
The senseless killing of a security guard, Edgar Ayala, and the son of a pastor, David Longsworth, apparently for a gun, sent shockwaves through the Old Capital. Despite the launch of RESTORE Belize in June 2010—RESTORE being an acronym for Re-Establish Security Through Outreach Rehabilitation and Education—the crime wave has been unrelenting and many Belizean citizens are saying that they have never felt more unsafe.
 
CRIME
  
The high rate of crime in Belize continues to be of grave concern among Belizeans, especially in the commercial capital, Belize City, and charges of police involvement and impropriety levied against some officers was the reason why Ombudsman Cynthia Pitts called in a parade of police top brass to her office in January, including Commissioner of Police, Crispin Jeffries, Sr., and heads of the Criminal Investigation Branch, among others of senior rank, to lay the cards on the table.
  
“I have heard the underground rumors of police who kill and are on the payroll of certain people. I won’t pretend I don’t know. I will put it on the table and ask them about it, because I want some answers,” Pitts told Amandala.
  
On that occasion, Jeffries told Pitts that the conviction rates were so bad, he did not wish to disclose it to the public.
  
“I expected it to be terrible,” said Pitts. “What he told me was worse than I have ever heard.”
  
Data we later have received at this newspaper indicate that the rate has ranged between 5% and 7%. Ironically, drug and utensil possession was the most common reason for imprisonment at the Hattieville Prison.
  
The January 7, 2010 gang truce ended with a grenade blast in the Caesar Ridge area four days later.
  
Meanwhile, in April, Jeffries had announced at a press conference that major crimes were down by 30.6%.
  
To the credit of the police, they caught one of “Belize’s most wanted,” Gary Seawell, 33, on the run since 2007, in Esperanza, Cayo, with what had been described as a cache of weapons, among them a hand grenade and four assault rifles.
  
However, the police took a lot of heat over a series of shootings, including the controversial February 27th killing of Teddy Murillo, blamed on a cop; the tragic shooting of construction worker Steven Buckley—in the head—which police had called an accident; and the murder of Christopher Galvez, which sparked the birth of Belizeans for Justice.
  
Galvez’s aunt, Yolanda Schakron, had told the media that she had been getting threatening text messages from Chris’ cell phone number, to pressure them to back off from pursuing arrests in the case. She publicly alleged a police cover-up in the investigation of Galvez’s death.
  
On June 2, the Office of the Prime Minister announced the launch of his administration’s crime strategy, RESTORE Belize, essentially a Southside Belize City program. The Government finally declared that it has a crisis on its hands. The Barrow administration also appointed a new Minister of Police in the person of Doug Singh and added Public Safety to the title of the ministry.
  
The Opposition withdrew its formal support for RESTORE Belize after the United Democratic Party’s newspaper, The Guardian, ridiculed the Leader of the Opposition, saying that he, Johnny Briceño, was following true leadership in endorsing the RESTORE Belize agenda.
  
The new spike in crime has come notwithstanding RESTORE Belize, notwithstanding moves in Parliament to stiffen penalties for major crimes, including gun crimes.
 
WEALTH UNTOLD
  
Belize, particularly the Cayo District, is being explored for its store of precious metals, such as gold and silver, as well as lead and other associated metals—tin and zinc. Craig Moore, the current Inspector of Mines, in the Department of Geology and Petroleum, told Amandala that the percentages of lead and silver “lends quite a bit of high interest.”
  
Geologist Jean H. Cornec, a founding director of Belize Natural Energy, which struck commercial oil in Belize in 2005, and who has done extensive work in Belize with the Geology Department (through the UN), had just released a report in 2010 in which he cited specific areas of Belize—and particularly the Maya Mountains and a network of rivers and tributaries in the region—as having “intriguing gold potential.”
  
Moore described the Cornec report as credible.
  
Dated May 2010, Cornec’s five-page report says, “Belize holds intriguing gold potential in an under-explored region that is politically secure while offering attractive mining deal terms. Alluvial gold was first described more than 60 years ago, and fine gold flakes can be panned in numerous drainages of the Maya Mountains.”
  
Cornec said: “It took more than 50 years of exploration by oil companies to find the first commercial fields in Belize, and perhaps with high gold prices, the time has come for the mining industry to step up to the plate and help the country realize its hard rock mineral potential.”
  
Five years ago, Belize joined the list of petroleum-producing nations around the globe, with exports exceeding $800 million between 2005 and 2010.
  
The ruling United Democratic Party pledged to Belizeans, before coming into office, that it would establish a national oil company in which Belizeans could purchase shares. To date, no such company has been set up.
  
Belizean activists, among them the Citizens Organized for Liberty through Action (COLA), have been calling for Belize to get a bigger slice of the petroleum pie. The national receipts are around 20% of gross revenues.
  
At the same time, some investors in the only petroleum-producing company, Belize Natural Energy, are at war with other investors over the sharing of petroleum profits.
  
Opposition member of Parliament and Albert area representative Mark Espat issued a public call on the Government in January to undertake an accounting of Belize’s petroleum, in light of what he described as a “scandalous” ratio of funds coming to Belizeans from what had been dubbed a national asset.
  
In an exclusive interview, a very irate Irish investor told Amandala: “We have just been bulldozed out of the way and manipulated … the shareholders, who made the whole oil thing possible in the first place, haven’t received a bloody penny from BNE…”
  
Barrow curtly said that there would be no investigation. The Income Tax Department and the Department of Geology and Petroleum are charged with reviewing the petroleum numbers, he had told us.
  
When asked if he would commission an investigation or special House Committee hearing on the distribution of the oil wealth, Barrow maintained that he absolutely would not.
  
Amandala’s May 2010 review of the petroleum concessions revealed that 7 of the 17 contracts—including the concession for Princess Petroleum Ltd. granting access to 200,000 acres onshore and 1.8 million acres offshore Belize—were all sealed on the same day, October 12, 2007, by former Minister of Natural Resources Florencio Marin, Sr.
   
The Barrow administration subsequently issued a sizeable offshore block to OPIC, a foreign investment arm of the state-owned company of Taiwan, Chinese Petroleum Corporation.
  
Prime Minister Barrow’s law partner, attorney Rodwell Williams, SC, helped to form Princess Petroleum. Williams is also listed as the local contact for another company with an offshore concession, Providence Energy Limited.
  
Williams told Amandala that he forms hundreds of these companies but, “It’s simply a vanilla exercise.”
  
Public pressure on the government heightened in June, when the Belize Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage launched a national campaign to get petitioners to lobby the government to back off from its stance on offshore drilling. The Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations had previously called on the Government of Belize to ban petroleum exploration in offshore Belize and protected areas. The Coalition sounded the call specifically for a ban of offshore drilling. The petition was also championed by COLA, a Coalition member which had separately written Prime Minister Dean Barrow calling for a moratorium. The National Trade Union Congress of Belize, the umbrella organization of all trade unions in Belize, voted to join the cause of the Coalition.
 
However, PM Barrow did not yield to the calls and said that it would be years before any company is ready to drill offshore. He said that the Department of the Environment has the mandate to ensure that the proper environmental controls are in place for any such venture.
  
Meanwhile the Maya of Toledo, who continue to assert ancestral rights over lands in Southern Belize, have also challenged the government’s granting of petroleum, logging and other concessions in the South.
 
MAYA LAND RIGHTS
  
The June 2010 ruling by former Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh—now serving in the Court of Appeals in the Bahamas—has emboldened the Maya to maintain their claim to land rights, as well as interests in the natural wealth of the South.
  
In the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Conteh declared rights he said had long existed and continue to exist in Southern Belize and also reasonably extend to the five Mopan Maya villages of Stann Creek.
  
The judgment called on the Government of Belize to put the brakes on any leases, grants, concessions and contracts that would affect Maya land rights in the Toledo District.
  
The Government has since appealed, stating that if need be, it would fight the case all the way to the Caribbean Court of Justice, since it does not accept that the Toledo Maya are entitled to lands in all the 38 villages they have claimed as theirs.
  
The Chief Justice had ruled on a similar case on October 18, 2007, when he ruled in favor of Conejo and Santa Cruz, Toledo.
  
“I, therefore, find that from the evidence, there is in existence in Maya villages in Toledo District customary land tenure by which the villagers have rights and interest in villages that—for the avoidance of doubt—this conclusion is not limited only to Conejo and Santa Cruz villages…but includes as well—as of course it must, given the representative nature of the instant claim—the other Maya villages in the Toledo District.”
  
Villagers of Toledo had during 2010 been successful in getting Belize Hydroelectric Development & Management Company Limited (BHD) to back down from its plan to undertake further hydro-development on the Rio Grande, under a 15-year concession granted to it in December 2008 by the Barrow administration.
  
In its defense in the Maya Land Rights case, the Government side had contended (citing information published in the Maya Atlas) that the Maya of Toledo were recent migrants from Guatemala who were trying to get from Belize what they could not get from Guatemala.
   
The Maya contended that notwithstanding the recent migration of some persons living in the South, they are genuine descendants of Maya who had occupied the area during pre-colonial times. Expert testimony was given for both sides in the trial.
 
GUATEMALA
  
Reports of incursions in Southern and Western Belize continued in 2010, including allegations of pillaging inside the Columbia River Forest Reserve and aggressive hunting of scarlet macaws to extinction inside the Chiquibul Forest.
  
Rafael Manzanero, Executive Director of Friends for Conservation and Development (FCD), had informed that the incursions—whether to extract woods, xaté or scarlet macaws—are nothing new. Way back in the 1970’s, he noted, there had been evidence of encroachments, such as milpa farming by Guatemalans inside Belizean territory, as well as associated deforestation. In those days, xatéro were believed to number about 1,000.
           
According to Manzanero, more than 8,000 acres inside Chiquibul have been decimated by illegal intruders, whereas another 3,000 acres have been cleared inside the nearby Caracol Archaeological Reserve, both located in the Cayo District. He also noted that incursions have advanced as far as 35 miles into Belize.
  
Fearing more recent encroachments in the area, villagers of San Jose and Na Lum Cah, Toledo, called on the Government of Belize in June to increase Belize Defence Force (BDF) presence in the area, after reports that Guatemalan xatéros were operating very close to their village. The BDF claimed that they had increased surveillance in the area, but months later, in October, two Belizean men were savagely attacked after sharing their food with men they believed to be xatéros.
  
The Government of Belize had also received complaints that illegal Guatemalan migrants had rustled horses in the area and cleared out a portion of the Columbia River Forest Reserve; however, they later reported that they had no evidence of such clearings.
  
Meanwhile, a report to our newspaper from FCD, which co-manages the Chiquibul Forest Reserve in Cayo, along with the Forest Department, declared that the xaté stock in that forest—the largest and last standing continuous broadleaf forest in the country—is gone.
  
Based on the information reaching conservationists, the xaté resources in Belize’s western and southern forests could be decimated in five years.
  
FCD called on the Government of Belize to undertake a series of conservation measures, among them increasing manpower to patrol, protect and conduct surveillance on the border.
  
Amid reports of continued incursions, controversy continued in Belize over a statement made by Belize Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wilfred “Sedi” Elrington, in which he described Belize’s border with Guatemala as “artificial”—to him, meaning “man-made.”
  
However, two of Belize’s leading attorneys—one of them a legal advisor of the Dean Barrow administration, the other an ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs—went on record to say that Elrington was wrong to call Belize’s border with Guatemala “artificial” in the context of the ongoing territorial dispute between the countries—a dispute that the Organization of American States (OAS) has recommended should be settled at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
  
Elrington made the comment, published internationally, describing Belize’s border with Guatemala as artificial, when Belize and Guatemala met in Washington, DC, USA, on Wednesday, December 16, 2009, at the headquarters of the OAS at a meeting called to diffuse flared tensions between Belize and Guatemala.
  
Elrington never retracted the statement, apologized for it or resigned his foreign affairs post—as some had been calling for him to do.
  
“I believe that it is exceedingly important that we start to educate the Belizean people about the Belize/Guatemalan dispute,” said Elrington, “because most people don’t know anything about it.
  
“You ask the average Belizean to tell you about it and they can’t...”
 
SOCIAL EXCLUSION
  
With experts and pundits delving into the root causes of crime in Belize, the social exclusion of thousands of Belizean children has come into sharp focus. Officials in the Ministry of Education revealed that 11,000 children who should be in primary school are NOT. They additionally revealed that 6 in 10 youth who should be in high school are NOT. An official from the Ministry of Education put the total number of young people not receiving at least a high school education at 17,000 minimally – that’s as many people as are living in Orange Walk Town, the third most populous municipality in the country.
  
Whereas the primary school enrollment rate is tagged at 83%, the high school enrollment rate is less than half that, currently reported at 40%.
  
At the start of the year, the draft report of the latest country poverty assessment indicated that over 50,000 Belizeans, particularly in the Southside of Belize City and in Toledo, have plunged into the depths of poverty between the last country assessment done in 2002 and the most recent study done in 2009, a span of seven years. Forty-three percent of the Belizean population (or 142,000) are classified as poor, versus under 90,000 in 2002.
  
“Belize has the highest incidence of population and household poverty of the Caribbean countries shown. It is, however, on a par with Mexico and has significantly lower levels of indigence and poverty than both Guatemala and Honduras,” the CPA pointed out.
 
TRADE UNIONS
  
In February 2010, Prime Minister Dean Barrow declared in his State of the Nation address that: “The upcoming fiscal year is going to be the hardest of the UDP term. ...This is going to be an extremely difficult year, and we are going to have to ask people to make sacrifices.”
  
This speech came amid calls by trade unions for a salary adjustment in the 2010-2011 budget. Barrow said that the financial package the unions had submitted amounted to at least $122 million over the next three years (2010-2013)—money he claimed the government would not have.
  
“We don’t have the money. Punto final!” Barrow told Amandala.
  
The increase would have directly benefited over 10,000 Belizean workers.
  
Union reps called on the Barrow administration to find a fast solution to the worsening cost-of-living pressures. The unions are still waiting.
  
The Belize National Teachers’ Union protested that same month over planned reforms to the Education Act, including the outlawing of corporal punishment in schools and the establishment of a new system of hiring, firing and monitoring of teacher performance through the Teaching Services Commission.
  
“Who need fi get lash, so they could listen?” one chanter questioned at the Independence Hill protest in Belmopan.
  
“Faber!” the crowd shouted back, referring to Education Minister Patrick Faber.
   
Despite the standoff between teachers and the minister—including angry words over the minister’s declaration that the teachers are “ignorant,” referring to lack of knowledge on alternatives to corporal punishment—the parties were able to move forward in joining forces to implement new provisions of the Education Act.
  
There have also been tensions over plans to eventually amalgamate certain primary schools—a discussion that should come to the fore when the government moves to implement a test run in the Belize River Valley area.
  
Meanwhile, the BNTU had expressed concerns over the need for more teacher-training. A BNTU official had indicated that within primary schools, only 43% of teachers are deemed to be trained. The figure is even worse for secondary schools: only 34% of high school teachers are considered trained for the job. Even at the university level, he said, there are complaints of teachers (training other teachers) who don’t have the requisite master’s degree qualification.
  
Around the same time as the conflicts in Belize between the Government and BNTU, Guatemalan teachers blocked the border bridge at Melchor de Mencos as they were protesting for a 16% salary increase from their government, as well as the upgrade of what they had decried as dilapidated school buildings.
 
CONTENTION IN CITRUS
   
The majority shareholder of Citrus Products of Belize Limited (CPBL), the Citrus Growers Association, and the minority shareholder, Banks Holdings of Barbados, have been at odds over a 2006 investment agreement under which the consent of the foreign investor is required to pass board decisions at CPBL.
   
As the year draws to a close, the parties continue to be at loggerheads, and the stalemate has meant that board meetings are on pause, pending an attempt at intervention in January 2011 by Prime Minister Dean Barrow.
  
At the start of 2010, Amandala was informed that Barbados’ agent had made what a CGA official had described as a “sneaky offer” to CGA, to sell its 51% stake in CPBL, valued minimally at $75 million, for $20 million.
  
As the months progressed, CGA had to fight in court and on the protest line to remove three directors who were occupying CGA seats on the CPBL board, after the men—CPBL CEO and managing director of Citrus Products of Belize Limited (CPBL), Dr. Henry Canton; CPBL chairman Mike Duncker; and former CGA chairman and board member Frank Redmond, accused of not acting in the interests of local growers—refused CGA’s calls to step down.
  
Canton and Duncker were among the 7 persons who had formed a rival citrus association, Belize Citrus Mutual, back in November 2009.
  
The CGA has recently moved to have Canton dismissed from his post as CEO of CPBL via an extraordinary general meeting; but Canton has refused to step down on the claim that he can only be fired via a directive from the board—which has been unable to meet due to the impasse between the shareholders.
  
Meanwhile, the citrus industry remains threatened by the incurable citrus greening disease, which, if left unchecked, could devastate the citrus belt of the South. There was dispute again in recent weeks over a move by the Belize Agricultural Health Authority (BAHA) to destroy nursery plants which had been grown without the required screening. BAHA and CGA contended that the measure was necessary as a part of efforts to help control the spread of greening in Belize. However, some growers, believing that a nutritional treatment could save affected plants, were angry over the destruction of nursery plants.
  
Citrus greening is a growing threat not just in Belize, but also in more developed countries like the USA, and local authorities say that proper control measures—for which funding is regrettably scarce—is critical for the continued survival of the industry.
 
SUGAR NOT SO SWEET
  
The year began with 6,000 cane farmers facing extended delays in deliveries of sugar cane to the Belize Sugar Industries at Tower Hill, Orange Walk, due to hiccups in getting the $126 million bagasse plant at BELCOGEN, a Belize Sugar Industries (BSI) power project intended to feed 13.5 MW of power to the national grid, fully operational after a late start to the production season.
  
Cañeros were concerned that the factory shutdowns, due to problems with power generation at the new power plant, would cause them to lose major income. In January, they were already claiming a loss of $4 million.
  
High ranking government officials were called to intervene to help solve the crisis. It was recently confirmed that sugar production for the season was indeed lower than 2010 projections.
  
The Government of Belize recently approved a bailout loan for the sugar industry, to help meet payments to cañeros for this season and to help finance next year’s operations.
 
MORE TAXES, MORE PAIN
  
The 2010-2011 budget included an increase in tax revenues of over $100 million. The $61 million budget deficit is being financed this year with a hike in sales tax, from 10% to 12.5%, effective April 1, 2010.
  
“This is the biggest tax whap handed to the Belizean people since Independence,” said Opposition Leader John Briceño of the People’s United Party, in the budget debate. “This could not have come at a worse time in our nation’s development.”
  
For his part, Prime Minister Barrow claimed that the effects on the poor would be buffered with some key tax relief measures: the removal of import duties and GST from certain cooking oils, hot dog sausages, luncheon meat, potted meat, macaroni and cheese dinners, hot chocolate, cocoa, coffee, breakfast cereals, vitamins and supplements, yeast, powdered detergents, school bags, banana cable ways (for agriculture industry), irrigation pipes of plastic, tractor parts, refrigerators, washing machines, and stoves.
  
Over the course of the year, the government has increased the ceiling of income tax exemptions to $26,000 per annum and more recently to $29,000 per annum.
  
A flat tax of $1.00 per gallon of fuel, imposed in 2008, also to stop the budget deficit, remains, despite the fact that pump prices have again surged past the $10.00 mark. The government had set an $8 threshold for the revision of the tax, but later said that it absolutely needs the money to finance the budget.
  
FROM PRIVY COUNCIL TO CCJ
  
2010 goes down in the annals of Belizean history as the year that the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) took the place of the Privy Council as Belize’s final appellate court.
  
In May 2010, Belize became the third country in the region to adopt the CCJ, based in Port of Spain, Trinidad, as the court with ultimate jurisdiction in both criminal and civil matters, as well as legal trade disputes related to the implementation of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). All appeals of Court of Appeal decisions filed after May were to be sent up to the CCJ.
  
The first Belize case, an appeal by ex-ministers of the People’s United Party, Joe Coye and Florencio Marin, Sr., was heard on November 29, 2010, and a decision is pending.