Opening old wounds

By G. Michael Reid

My attention was brought to an article in the Amandala, dated Sunday, April 3rd 2011, by a good friend who recognized that a story being told therein, did not coincide with her recollection of the facts.  Titled "When fish come from River bottom….", the article was the narrative of a drama in which I was a main player.  Let me first of all pledge to my readers, that I will in no way be engaging in any back and forth on this subject and will subject none to the rehashing of this story, long told and grown old.  There are just too many fallacies and inconsistencies however and too blatant an attempt to defame my character for me to not at least try to set this record straight.

This is a story that began way back in 1991 when I first returned to Belize after living abroad for two decades.  I met and became involved with a young journalist by the name of Audrey Matura.  That union produced a male child who turns eighteen this summer and of whom I am well proud.  I will be forever grateful to Audrey for facilitating his arrival on this plane.  The relationship did not last long after my son was born and Audrey has gone on to remarry more than once since then.  I was hesitant to even comment on this matter because I did not want my son to be affected in anyway.  I believe however, that nothing that either myself

UDP losing grounds in Belize City

BY: CP Mathers

The United Democratic Party is rapidly losing grounds in the old capital as more and more people are staying away from their political conventions, a clear sign that they are fed up with the UDP government.

Of the 13 seats, 10 of which are within city limits, 7 of them have UDP candidates. Three were contested, three endorsed and one candidate had a secret endorsement.  In all these conventions and endorsements, there has been a poor turnout and it clearly shows that they are losing grounds in Belize City.

The Caribbean Shores convention held in December last year saw a

Who put the hit on Eric Chang?

Belize City, April 15, 2011

Despite orders from the top that no one makes public the Customs' raid of UDP Belize City Councillor, Eric Chang, the hairy cat was let out of the bag, and it has opened a Pandora's Box for the once-presumed saintly character.

As the reports indicate, the Customs operation was carried out after it was found that Chang had not paid duties for a late model green-colour Isuzu D-Max he has been cruising in throughout the city for several years.

Chang has called it all a "minor" understanding, but he is clearly merely trying to let it blow like wah lee

Eulogy – Dotsy Chanona

"Joy drenched me when

You, God: said

'Come inside my house.'

Now my feet stand within your

gates planted upon your wholeness.:

On Saturday night, April 2, 2011 at 11:00 p.m. Dotsy Chanona heard God's words "Come inside my house" and Dotsy very quietly, died.  Surely at this very moment her feet stand planted on God's wholeness.   We imagine her freedom as she is now released from the wheel chair to which she had been confined for the last phase of her earthly journey.

This beautiful woman known as Mummy to her eight children, Carolee, Al, Maureen, Tommy, Anthony, Margaret, Elizabeth and Robert was born in Belize City on February 6, 1922, to her parents, Bertha and Alvan Woods.

She lived her life in the countries of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Canada.  On her return to Belize from Canada, she and her husband, Ernest, went to live on Blue Mountain Ranch on the Hummingbird Highway.  It was at this ranch that Ernest and Dotsy gathered the family for celebrations and quiet times.  After her husband's death, the ranch continued to be Dotsy's home and the place that drew family and friends around her.

When her health began to fail, Dotsy found a home with her daughter, Carolee. Here

Malpago CitCo cut out by BEL

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The latest embarrassment for the constantly disgraced UDP Belize City Council came this morning when an employee of the Belize Electricity Limited walked up to the its office on North Front Street and cut off their electricity supply.

The BEL employee then went over to the Council's Commercial Centre near the Swing Bridge and did the same, and to the Mile 4 location and repeated the drill.

The bill is said to be somewhere in the vicinity of $30,000, and the quick and fast, and expected, reaction from City Hall was that they were cut out for bills purportedly owing

GANG WARFARE TURNS CITY STREETS DEADLY

Avondale "Hogbone" Trumbach

Belize City, April 12, 2011
When 29 year old well-known George Street gang associate, Avondale Fuller-Trumbach, was gunned down in broad daylight and amidst a huge crowd in one of the busiest areas of the city, it was clear that the gang warfare in the old capital had reached a new, deadly level.
It didn't matter to the gunmen that Conch Shell Bay, the popular fish market on Vernon Street, was filled, as it normally is on a weekday afternoon, with onlookers and regular pedestrians. That didn't stop the attack, and when armed men surfaced

The tangled web of a spendthrift Government

Belize's economy is crumbling and the Prime Minister and his government are casting blame on everybody's uncle, auntie and godmother. The Prime Minister is obviously a dunce on matters of the national debt which is unlike his Shakespearean prose.

In reality he and his Party came to office promising to "fix" an economy that didn't need fixing. As he continued his spendthrift ways, he suddenly realized that the country has international debt obligations and that he had been elected to "fix" things, not to cast blame. Get real Mr. Barrow.

But there appears to be some disconnect. There are still a few in the Cabinet who were bold enough to mention in the few minutes that they devoted to the "debate" on the government's budget, two weeks ago, that "this government is taking this economy on the way up….so that we can take the benefit of that growth and pass in on to the poor."

The poor are left to imagine the possibilities with the agony of deficient expectations.  Representatives of this government have

John on Crime

It was interesting to see the look on the Prime Minister's face during his press conference on Tuesday.  His usual swagger was gone, his bravado was turned into a look of hopelessness and on the whole he looked defeated.  With his leadership in question, the Prime Minister was less then reassuring; instead his was the look of a man who has run out of ideas.

During the Press Conference the Prime Minister offered Belizeans the same solutions that were rejected earlier, to change the constitution to allow for preventative detention, which effectively would threaten the civil liberties of Belizeans.  Indeed there are some who will say yes; whatever is necessary must be done.  Others will say, "Just stop the violence … by any means necessary".  The problem with this is that there is no proof that Preventative Detention will make any difference whatsoever in stemming the violence and the rising crime rate.

In October 2008, during a meeting of the House of Representative, I stood up in a spirit of bipartisanship and offered to work with the Government