By: Omar Silva I Editor/Publisher

NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE BELIZE

www.nationalperspectivebz.com

Belize City: Wednesday 17th December 2025

🗞️ EDITORIAL

The wheel was never broken—it was repainted, polished, and rolled back over the backs of the Belizean people.

For over two decades, the ruling elites of Belize have taken us for a ride so shameless, so calculated, that history itself will struggle to record it without blushing. From the privatization of BTL to the ruin of Intelco, from Ashcroft’s silent reentry through share schemes to the spectacle of nationalization and re-compensation, and now to the secretive backdoor negotiations for BTL to acquire SMART, we see a wheel of dependency turning with sinister precision.

And at its center are the same few names—Ashcroft, Briceño, Barrow, Musa, Godfrey—rotating chairs at the feast, while the people of Belize are handed nothing but broken promises and inflated phone bills.

From Sovereignty to Servitude

When Dean Barrow stormed the public stage in 2009 to seize BTL “for the people,” we believed it was our moment. We believed that Belize had drawn a line in the sand—that the age of foreign dominance over national infrastructure was over.

But no sooner had the ink dried than the courts ruled against us, and we were forced to pay back Ashcroft over half a billion dollars. A staggering price, justified with patriotic slogans and empty forecasts.

Yet despite this costly reclamation, telecom prices didn’t drop. Broadband didn’t reach the hinterlands. Service didn’t improve. And the only thing that multiplied was the debt passed on to future generations.

SMART Deception: From Shadow to Spotlight

Now, in 2025, as reports emerge that BTL is preparing to acquire SMART, we are told again that this is “strategic,” that this is for “efficiency,” that this is to “better serve the people.”

Spare us the script.

SMART—widely reported to be majority-owned by Ashcroft’s Waterloo Charitable Trust, with alleged minority holdings by Briceño-linked companies like Centaur Cable—was the counterweight to BTL after the 2009 nationalization.

If BTL now acquires SMART, the Government of Belize will be quietly paying Ashcroft again—only this time with no debate, no protest, and no transparency.

This isn’t strategy. It’s surrender wrapped in state secrecy.

The Engineered Circle of Dependency

What connects every phase of this saga is one truth: Government was never the solution—it was the enabler.

• It was the government that allowed Intelco to collapse, transferring debt to SSB and letting BTL feast on the scraps.
• It was the government that used SSB as a piggy bank, forcing public workers’ savings into overpriced telecom shares.
• It was the government that paid Ashcroft in US dollars, after losing in courts it promised to defy.
• And now, it is the government that is poised to return to a telecom monopoly, dressed up as “national ownership,” while keeping the public in the dark.

This is not failed policy. This is engineered dependency—designed by elites, managed by technocrats, and delivered through a compliant public sector.

The Complicit Few Must Be Named

It is time we call them what they are: shameless architects of deception.

• Politicians who sold and re-sold the same company while claiming to protect the nation.
• Legal advisors who drafted agreements knowing they would entrench foreign and familial control.
• Social Security Boards who signed away workers' money in silence.
• Cabinet members who now hide behind BTL’s board while pushing this new acquisition without public scrutiny.

They did not fail us. They colluded against us.

Final Words: If We Do Not Stop This, We Deserve It

This is our line in the sand.

The Belizean people must rise—not with applause or another round of blind hope—but with critical questions, public mobilization, and institutional resistance.

Demand answers:

• Who owns SMART, truly?
• How is this deal being financed?
• What does it mean for competition, for pricing, for media freedom?

And most of all, how many more times will we pay for the same telecom empire—just under different names?

Because if we do nothing now, we will have to admit a painful truth:

We are no longer being robbed—we are volunteering.

📢 National Perspective Belize calls on every union, every civil society body, every true journalist, and every citizen who still believes in sovereignty to say:

NO MORE!!!

Let us not be silent accomplices in the final act of this national betrayal.