By Marshall Nunez
This Tuesday night the twenty three constituents came together in an effort to established unity within the PUP as we head into an announcement of the upcoming Party’s National Convention.
What can be construed from the Patchakan Accord seems to have created some calm especially around what would have been the factions between the party . Some people at the Northern Caucus event are ecstatic about this latest attempt at unification and yet, some people are a little uneasy even skeptical that it is for real then there is a small group who are sorry that the unity has taken place because they live for the division and excitement that is used to create.
For me I have always been an advocate of unity and so I am pleased to see that there is this level of unity within the party. Of course this is only the begging and we are quite away from the coming of next government but when we consider as a nation the what that the UDP has governed the country for the past two years we are hopeful that the PUP with a more united front might present the necessary alternatives that the country may need. Remember that next week the UDP marks the 2 1/2 year benchmark in office but with all that has happened and continues to happen we believe that their term is running down; we have to wake up to the reality that we have less than three years of this administration and a municipal and village council to make a a mark before then.
Just to go back little in time, when the UDP won the elections in February 2008 they inherited the budget that was approved and the being managed by the previous PUP government it wasn't until several months later that the UDP presented their budgets for that year 2008-2009. The point I am trying to illustrate that the true UDP prepared, presented, debated and approved budget the one for 2009-2010 is the only real budget that they were the architects of. When we reflect on the same financial year we are perplexed by the many, many, many things that have gone wrong during that period. Most salient is the bread and butter issue, the economy, the rate of inflation and the most recent revelation of the increasing number of people living on the poverty line of this country. This review of that period put us in a very good position to preview or expect the kind of disastrous economic condition with a widening deficit even as we near the mid-point of the financial year.
Already we are hearing the government finding excuses for their failed fiscal management and their inability to manage the national resources in an efficient, prudent and transparent way. As is traditional with the UDP they are excellent at casting blame and pointing fingers already they are blaming the super bond, they are casing blame on the debt servicing which is only 6 percent of the overall budget. The final analysis does not lend itself to the lie that all that has gone fiscally wrong over the past two years was a consequence of what the PUP did while they were in government.
So ask ourselves the question, why did hell we change the government? Weren't because we believed that they would have done a better job of administering the goods and services to the people, and managing the natural resources; in the way they had promised prudent and transparency. Obviously the state of the nation- as a failed state- would indicate we were fooled by the propaganda but sometimes the breeze blow pelican just where they want to blow, that is a choice we've made and so we will have to live with it until such time that would be able to correct the wrong.
As we look back on the quest and campaign for the general elections in 2007 the UDP seemed to have had such grand plans and knew it all as to how every Belizeans could have been able to live comfortably, particularly as a result of the fact that we had oil. The revenue from the oil would have been great enough to make life better for each and every Belizean. Thirty months in,we aregetting less than ever from the oil because, as the prime minster confessed ," he would prefer to not bother with the revenues coming from oil in order to keep the investment cline as it is rather than to ask for and sacrifice investors". We also need to remember for reasons to this date that are unexplained and somewhat alien to us the government took over BTL with the intention to resell it hopefully to locals. They forgot that it is the tax payers money that has been invested in BTL that in and of its self would have had more financial resources available to the base of local economy in other words more money would have been available to ordinary Belizeans to assist where we need it the most with our bread and butter issues.
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Source: The Belize Times
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