For God’s sake, stop it!

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By Lisa Shoman:  Prime Minister Dean Barrow [File: October 10, 2013]
“…if there is one thing that can and will bring down this government it is hustling in immigration. I have heard that there are ministers who are procuring visas for people. I have said pretty much every second cabinet, if you are doing so, I have no proof, for God sake stop it, stop it! That is what will cause the government to fall.”

To many seasoned and even jaded Jewelizeans the onslaught of black eyes for the Barrow administration in the last two weeks alone have been staggering.

From the bully boy tactics of the Chairman of the UDP disrupting the Senate Inquiry, to the spectacle of Penner attempting to cover up for a comeback, to Saldivar’s shenanigans on behalf of a #BanditsNation to the press release by Castro to announce that his visas were revoked, it has been body blow after body blow on the Jewel.

And yet, the Prime Minister, normally the most articulate and dramatic communicator of this nation has gone strangely silent. It is as if Donald Trump simply stopped tweeting. Unthinkable, right? UnBelizeable.

A part of me wonders if the PM has just mentally checked out and decided to remain utterly aloof, in exhaustion from the constant bacchanal that his Party has become. Maybe this is the calm before the storm of his departure and he is just waiting for the barometric pressure to rise just a bit more before he steps off the edge and into private life. Don’t stop the carnival.

But maybe, just maybe, he can’t stop the clowns from taking over the circus anymore. Since 2008, almost 10 years, and for 3 administrations, Dean Barrow has had his finger in the dyke trying to stop the deluge of doom threatening to cause his successive governments to fall.

Visa and passport scandals; the “hot-bed of corruption” at Lands; the use, misuse and abuse of government resources; crushing levels of debt; wild fuel prices; constant crony contracts; the crushing economic crisis; rampant nepotism; destruction of Maya sites for profit, and the forced removal of Minister after Minister from portfolio responsibility and the back-benching of at least 3 – the list goes on and on and on.

Still, Jewelizeans are a pretty tolerant and long suffering lot. We tek lick. We know how fu tek lik. This time, though, I sense an utter weariness and a deep, blazing anger in Belizeans which is being expressed pretty openly on social media.

We are reaching a tipping point. When the US starts to take steps like revoking visas and monitoring use of donated resources, we start to ask ourselves what is it that WE are doing to stop it. The reply to that was at first BNTU action- and now increasingly, Jewelizeans are openly proposing more and more violent scenarios in complete frustration and impotent anger. And they are doing so under their actual names and profiles.

And still the PM is strangely silent while his administration slowly begins to internally implode.

I think he is allowing the abscess to ripen. I think he is watching and waiting for the moment when he will announce his retirement and ride off into the sunset leaving his DPM and Saldivar to manage the circus and deal with the clowns. The bacchanal will no longer be his headache to handle.

The Senate Inquiry continues today. Apparently, more visa revocations will be announced. And the Jewel’s name grows even more “stink da road”.

Don’t stop the carnival.

The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not necessarily those of Breaking Belize News.