By Jamil Matar
When I see people flaunting the statistic that OW, Stann Creek and Punta Gorda are Coronavirus free, it reminds me of the joke about designating a specific section of a swimming pool as the area to pee. My dear people, the confirmed cases of Covid-19 affects all of our country, not only a few districts. I applaud the concept of extending the SOE for a while longer, and the night curfew is definitely working well. Imagine all those nightclubs and bars going full swing and spreading the pathogen like crazy!
I did not listen to either the House or the Senate meeting. The previous evening we had already heard what the Government and the Covid-19 National Oversight Committee had recommended for at least another month, anyway. Therefore, to have listened to well-remunerated people quarrelling over semantics interested me little to none. Generally, I am more interested in solutions rather than objections. It seems to me that the nationwide quarantine has paid off handsome dividends to Belize, considering the prevalence of cases in our neighboring countries, and, except for the stubborn few, I think that on a whole Belizeans are perceptively conscious of the urgency of the situation. Thank God!
Before I get to the meat of my little story this week, let me first just offer a heartfelt Belizean thank you to our Prime Minister, Hon. Dean Barrow. Seriously, this is the PM’s last seven months in public office in Belize. He will be going on retirement at the end of this year. Mr. Barrow did not need this level of stress at his age and at this point in his political career. A self-centered person like me would have gladly passed on the baton of this difficulty to someone else and gone to relax with my family at home the instant people started cursing me out, calling me names, and wishing me dead. Yes, it is true, readers, it is right there on FB. When a story appeared that the leader of North Korea might have died, someone posted that it should have been Dean Barrow. That is what politics has evolved to in our country today: a bunch of partisan haters. I think that no matter how “Barbarian” one is, he/she should never wish evil on another human being, simply because of political differences. Then again, I may be the most naïve person in Belize, no true?
To my related and amusing story now. When BBN posted that a PUP Councilor from OWT had been detained for curfew violation, the social media lights went bright with accusations of UDP political victimization. This was followed by denunciations against the police for being “simple”. It later turned out that the police were doing their job well in applying the law, no matter how “comfortable” the accused person was. On Monday night, “Channel Fox” aired an interview with the accused Councilor. I will attempt to make light of the situation with my personal take of this interview. I once thought that no one could have confused me more than when Hon. Boots Martinez was asked by Love FM to explain the difference between the BOOST and the Pantry programs. Boy was that a challenge for me to sort out! On Monday night past, Ramesh Vaswani gave me the same challenge: to try to sort out his explanation for his offence. Truly, Ramesh had more hand gestures than former U.S. Democratic Presidential hopeful, Beto O’Rourke did. With flailing arms, Mr. Vaswani weaved a tangled explanation as to why he was out after curfew hours. Did he go up a One-Way street once or twice? Was he going home or not? How many times did the vehicle re-fuel? His swinging arms took me back to the nursery rhyme “fly away Peter, fly away Paul…” I am still confused to this hour as to why he was detained. Let us see how the magistrate sorts his story on May 5. That is it for me this week, dear readers. Remember, wear masks and stay far from one another on the street, hear?
