The PUP city council was officially sworn to office on Wednesday and more than an officious ceremony it had all the garbs of it being a wild political rally. And as rallies go so do promises.
Most people who were of voting age back in 1998 can remember the grandiose promises of 10 thousand houses and 15 thousand jobs that swept the PUP into office back in 1998. We had thought that giving people these kinds of promises were a thing of the past and then bam… Bernard Wagner did it again!
He promised that the Belize City Council would build cement houses for residents of the city through some private sector arrangement which he is yet to formulate. This single promise thrust our memories back to the 98 to 2008 PUP maladministration. The horrors of that administration returned to the forefront, in particular the flashes of the failures that were the housing hustles became all too vivid. It would be too lengthy an exercise to enumerate the various failed housing projects; some of which to this day, stand as testament of the cancerous effect that these corrupt projects can have on a nation.
While Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow was able to make the best of the worst of situations by writing off most of these houses a few years ago, we are yet to pay for those wild hustles of the PUP. Yes they are lumped into the Superbond that we continue to pay every six months. Now here we are once again, the PUP returning to City Hall, which by the way has no business in building houses, promising once again that they will be building houses. We need to remind Wagner that this is nowhere to be found in the purview of the City Council. But like the good old PUP and its rebirth, these promise are signature PUP and we will sit and wait to say ‘We told you so.’
