-- It is shameful and very disrespectful that Cayo Northeast representative Elvin Penner could do what he did and still continue to collect over a hundred thousand dollars of the people’s money every year. In any other country, he would have had to resign, be put in jail, or worse. In Belize, we continue to call him “honorable”. I am pretty sure there are some who have already grown tired and weary of hearing about Penner but we cannot allow this to just go quietly into the night. I am sorry, but if this is the last column left doing it, I will continue speak on this and hope that at some point, something will be done. Despite the best of efforts though, Pennergate seems slowly fading off the radar. Castrogate however, is starting to bleep louder. The situation with Castro continues to bubble hot on the front burner after a brave young lady came forward with her story. This lady has put her life on the line in order that Belizeans might know what is really going on. In an interview on the Dickie Bradley show last week, Belize’s most famous whistle-blower Alverine Burgess put her face to the name and went on record to insist that she gave Edmund Castro thousands of dollars to secure visas for Chinese nationals. The Prime Minister himself admitted that he had been made aware of the hustling in a press conference where he uttered his now famous, “for GOD’s sake stop it” remark. With this new evidence, it will be interesting to see what the Prime Minister does. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on the wrong that has been done by Castro, the focus seems now more on the wrong that was done by the US in secretly recording the transactions. Miss Burgess revealed in her interview with Bradley that an agent of the US embassy had played back a recording of her and Minister Castro negotiating a deal. It seems that not only does Burgess have evidence but the folks at the US embassy have it all on tape. They are in a predicament however. If the US embassy was to admit that they have a recording of the exchange between Burgess and Castro, that would be damning and compelling evidence and Dean Barrow would have to act. If however, the embassy was to make such an admission then it would prove that they are indeed eavesdropping on foreign governments. The US has recently come under a lot of criticism and scrutiny for doing just that in Germany and France in particular. The news that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone was being tapped by the National Security Agency (NSA) made big news and was received with “great indignation” in that country. Allegations of spying by the US also caused a huge diplomatic uproar in France this past week. Their newspapers reporting that NSA had tapped millions of phones in that country and that it had also been monitoring the electronic communications of French diplomats. Both the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the French daily Le Monde have been running regular stories about the leaks being released by former NSA contractor Eric Snowden. Snowden, an American computer specialist and former CIA employee and NSA contractor has disclosed up to 200,000 classified documents to the press. The information coming from the documents divulged by Snowden have been labeled, “the worse security leak” in US history and is considered much worse than Wiki Leaks. According to reports, the documents of Wiki Leak were classified no higher than “secret” while the documents that Snowden is now releasing are either “Top Secret” or “Special Intelligence. Many will remember back in 2010 when Private Chelsea Manning shook up the world by releasing hundreds of thousands of US secret documents later called Wiki Leaks. Within those “Leaks” were many documents involving Belize. The most famous one was a US Embassy communication that said of the Dean Barrow government that “despite their broad claims of success, the Embassy “has yet to see a significant difference between the current U.D.P. government and the previous P.U.P. Administration”. The communication went on to state that , “We often witness more of the same cronyism, public complaints of corruption at many levels of government and ineffective public service entities, including hospitals police and schools.” Those comments are as true today as they were back in 2010. We can only wait and wonder what will be released about Belize in these latest classified documents. No one doubts that the United States knows more about what is going on in our country than we do. Their high-level intelligence never sleeps and it would surprise no one to know that they have recordings of every illegal transaction ever carried out by this government. Everyone knows however, that the US concern extends no further than its borders and while they make sure to find out everything, they rarely let on what they know except to their own Department of Department. The reason of course is that while it might not be “criminally illegal” it is “factually illegal” to wiretap any government without its consent. While the UDP, unbeknownst to many, recently passed a law enabling themselves to listen in to the conversations of any of us in the general public, you can be sure that they would not be happy with anyone listening to them. It would be dangerously revealing. I would not be entirely upset about NSA listening to our politicians but I believe that there should be a quid pro quo. You can listen in the event that there might be something dangerous to your security happening but, you must let us know if there is any danger to us afoot. Technologically advanced countries like the United States could very well help underdeveloped countries like Belize hold their elected officials in check. Even if they just leak it to the press, let us know when you find something wrong. This United Democratic Party government has so much to hide that you can be sure they are hoping and praying that they hurry up and find and shut up Snowden. Snowden is currently hiding out in Russia and has been releasing information bit by bit. We can’t wait until he gets to the part about Belize. Meanwhile, more than a few backsides are going “cinco, sies”. Long live Belize!
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:33:56 +0000
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