By Omar Silva I Editor/Publisher

National Perspective Belize I Digital 2025

www.nationalperspectivebz.com 

Belize City: Thursday 10th July 2025

🖋️ Editorial

How do democracies die?

They do not always fall with a bang, or a coup, or the sudden appearance of tanks in the street. Sometimes they die in committee rooms, with the quiet drafting of an amendment that looks “reasonable” until you read the fine print.

Belizeans, this is one of those moments.

The 13th Amendment Bill now before the National Assembly is not a bill to improve security. It is a bill to bury accountability.

This is no exaggeration. This amendment does not simply update a statute. It retroactively legalizes years of unconstitutional States of Emergency—a crude attempt to erase the Supreme Court’s ruling that the government has repeatedly abused emergency powers against the people of the Southside.

This is not just misgovernance. It is mislaw—a deliberate rewriting of our most sacred text to protect the political architects of these abuses.

Some will say Belize has bigger problems. That crime is out of control. That desperate times require desperate measures.

But here is the uncomfortable truth:

The crime we face today is the consequence of decades of political neglect, social abandonment, and economic betrayal.

And the same leaders who ignored those root causes now want to rewrite the Constitution to give themselves more power—unaccountable, retroactive, and indefinite power.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

What kind of monsters did we vote for?

Leaders who:

• Detain hundreds without charge while ignoring the poverty that breeds gangs.
• Spend more energy criminalizing protest than fixing broken schools.
• Use “emergency” decrees to look strong while the economy rots.
• Now seek to turn a temporary abuse into permanent constitutional law.

Let us be clear:

1. This is not reform. This is retreat.
2. This is not security. This is submission.
3. This is not democracy. This is something darker.

If they succeed, no judgment of the Supreme Court will be safe. No right in the Constitution will be secure. Because each time they overreach, they will simply amend their sins into legality.

And what will be left of our democracy then?

We say no.

• No to retroactive tyranny.
• No to rewriting the Constitution to protect politicians.
• No to the normalization of indefinite emergency powers.

We urge every Belizean—whether PUP, UDP, independent, or undecided—to understand the gravity of this hour. This is not about party. This is about whether we will leave our children a Constitution worth defending.

Today, we decide whether Belize remains a democracy—or whether it becomes a cautionary tale.

Power is not permission.

The Constitution is not their plaything.

And the people are not their subjects.