Sick to their stomachs of the violence, grieving mothers, teachers, schoolchildren and now even medical doctors have taken to the streets to demonstrate, march and hold candle vigils in protest against the out-of-control crime situation.

Fourteen years later, the apprehension of the alleged murderer of schoolgirl Jasmine Lowe, aged 13 years, whose decomposing remains was found on the Cristo Rey Road in the Cayo District of Belize, caused the spontaneous gathering of a thousand angry and raucous residents. The throng milled about the courthouse on Wednesday June 20th 2012 waiting for a glimpse of Bert Vasquez Haylock, the man the police say killed Jasmine. They chantingly demanded justice while hanging Bert Vasquez in effigy.

What is wrong about the criminalization of consensual same sex conduct is that it relegates persons to an inferior status and degrades their dignity by declaring their most private and intimate feelings “unnatural” and criminal and invades their right to privacy and equality.

Mr. Barrow nationalized the highly profitable phone company once associated with Lord Ashcroft, enacted ad hominem legislation with stiff jail sentences for anyone seeking to arbitrate against the Belize government anywhere in the world and launched a sustained public relations campaign characterizing Ashcroft, Lord of Chichester, as the enemy of the Belizean people.

Knowingly and deliberately promoting a judge with a bad track record of adjudicating to a higher court that requires intellectual skills and acumen that judge does not possess is as deceitful an act as knowingly appointing a dishonest person to be a judge. The intent (and effect) in both cases is the same: the undermining of the rule of law.

Price’s personal lifestyle perhaps threw up fewer contradictions than that of the other four. Like Manley who used the more tropics-friendly Kariba suit, Price forsook the western style suit in favour of the guayabera. For the duration of his long career, he owned one suit that he used for international meetings and never abandoned the guayabera.

In 2001, Price received the Order of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), Caricom’s most prestigious award conferred on those members of the community who have advanced the cause of regionalism. It could not seriously be urged that he had contributed anything substantial to advance the cause of Caribbean regionalism.

Any discussion about the charismatic leaders of the decolonization process in the Commonwealth Caribbean during the late 1950s and 1960s would undoubtedly include the leaders of the so-called “big four” countries: Michael Manley of Jamaica, Forbes Burnham of Guyana, Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago and Errol Barrow of Barbados.

Trade unionism was the acknowledged route to political power in the Caribbean and Price, Burnham and Barrow were involved to varying degrees with trade unions but ultimately, it seems, primarily as a means of obtaining or consolidating party political power... In British Honduras, Price, along with a core of at least five others, formed first the People’s Committee (PC) at Price’s home following the devaluation of the British Honduras currency in December 1949.

I fear the Canon dost protest too much when he plaintively repeats that that they are not lawyers and that we have to trust the PM. Does not the Good Book counsel that trust should be placed in God, not man? The Churches should never have entered the negotiation with the PM unarmed. They should have taken their legal advisor. Unless of course they felt that in God they had the supreme advisor; in which case, He failed them miserably.