Independence Without Independence

By: Omar Silva I Editor/Publisher

National Perspective Belize Digital 2025

www.nationalperspectivebz.com

Editorial

Belize City, Wednesday 27th August 2025: Just imagine a country that calls itself law-abiding and God-fearing, where Sunday hymns rise to the rafters while envy and malice simmer in private. Imagine a politics that trains its followers to despise each other, even as both big parties kneel before the same small circle of extractive interests. Imagine a “Cabinet code of silence” where elected back-benchers—chosen by the people—are told, in effect, to sit down and obey. Now widen the lens: a nation that still lives off foreign aid, grants, and concessionary loans, where policy is quietly authored by those who control the purse strings.

If this sounds familiar, it is because we have mistaken ritual for morality and noise for governance. We celebrate political independence (September 21, 1981), yet in 2025—forty-four years on—we remain structurally dependent. The theatre changes, the script does not. Ministers boast about “partnerships,” but the unwritten contract is simple: you deliver alignment, we deliver lifelines. When a Foreign Minister can casually describe us as someone else’s “backyard,” the mask slips. It tells you who sets the table and who buss the dishes.

The rot begins with a myth: that virtue is proven by public piety and patriotic slogans. But moral postures don’t build industries, don’t raise productivity, don’t teach skills, don’t modernize the state. Vision does. Structure does. Investment—domestic, disciplined, and mission-driven—does. And on these, we have drifted. Our leaders recite growth figures while the real economy remains import-heavy, low-productivity, and beholden to external moods we cannot predict or control.

We need a first transformation of public life—one that breaks the spell of dependency and reorganizes power so that citizens, not courtiers, set the national mission. That starts with three plain shifts:

From charity to capacity. Aid that props up budgets without building competitive sectors keeps us upright but never lets us walk. Every dollar that enters Belize must be yoked to measurable capacity gains—technology transfer, export-ready standards, workforce upskilling, and local supplier development—or it is just elegant dependency.

From secrecy to sovereignty. Governance by whispered deals breeds a politics of fear and favours. Put sunlight back at the centre: proactive disclosure of contracts; independent audit with teeth; conflict-of-interest rules that actually bite; and procurement systems that are e-tracked, open, and searchable by the public.

From slogans to a production plan. If we will not produce, we will not be free. A credible industrialization drive is not a speech; it is a pipeline: (1) choose 5–7 product niches where Belize can compete in 3–5 years; (2) standardize quality; (3) finance modern equipment; (4) train workers for those exact lines; (5) secure regional market access; (6) protect infant industries with smart, time-bound measures; (7) export the surplus.

None of this will happen while Parliament is a stage and the Cabinet a closed fraternity. It requires constitutional habits that we have avoided: an empowered, independently elected or reconstituted Senate; guaranteed constituency disclosure of votes and expenditures; recall or censure mechanisms that mean something; and a civil service shielded from partisan purges. Power must learn to fear the citizen again—respectfully, lawfully, and productively.

So, are we a “good country”? A good country keeps faith with its people. It doesn’t grin for donors while neglecting domestic capacity. It doesn’t sell sovereignty for photo-ops. It doesn’t moralize in public and scheme in private. If the smiles and laughter around, you feel uncertain—compliment or insult? —that is your conscience telling you the social contract has thinned to a whisper.

Forty-four years is long enough to admit what hasn’t worked. The choice before us is not left or right, blue or red. It is dependency or dignity. It is ceremony or structure. It is quiet deals that feed a few—or a national mission that feeds a nation. The future will not arrive by grant. We will have to build it.