Written by: Godfrey Smith
Wednesday, June 02, 2010 

A high-level corporate manager wittily remarked, following one of former Prime Minister Musa’s countless Cabinet reshuffles, that he had reshuffled the Cabinet and when he dealt the new hand, the jokers were wild.

On Tuesday, June 1st, almost at the mid-term of his five-year tenure, Prime Minister Dean Barrow announced his long-expected Cabinet shuffle amid the dun, depressing atmospherics cast by the shooting ambush of his law partner and friend, Rodwell Williams.

The “fundamental impetus” for the reshuffle, the PM informed the nation, was to “confront and defeat” the burgeoning crime situation.

The PM announced that he was collapsing the Ministry of National Security encompassing the Police, Military and Immigration services and splitting it into a Ministry of Police and a Ministry of Defence.

His justification for separating the two is to have a “dedicated” Ministry of Police that concentrates on crime-fighting; one that will focus on its core competence, without the distraction of having to manage the military as well.

The apparent logic of this argument dissolves, however, upon closer scrutiny. In large countries with large militaries it is an obvious imperative that the two be kept separate.

The Belize Defence Force, however, more than any other department of government, is a disciplined unit that runs itself according to established protocols.

The Minister’s role is the passive one of being kept advised of incursions into Belize and other matters. There is little room for day-to-day ministerial oversight or policy input, which is the way it should be.

In Belize, it is clear that the military will be compelled, due to the sheer inadequacy of funds and manpower of the police, to increasingly assume law and order responsibilities. 

The threat to national and personal security is no longer external from Guatemala. The threat comes from within, shooting up like an angry volcano from the bowels of depressed, marginalized Southside communities and showering the public with the red hot lava of indiscriminate grenade bombing, $500.00-a-piece-assassinations and uncontrollable broad daylight gun violence. 

That the military will have to evolve into a national service corps is evident from Operation Jaguar. Jaguar, which quelled the almost nightly gun violence for two weeks, required the joint deployment of the police, coast guard and military working together in one coordinated action.

It is painfully obvious that a series of such operations, costly as they are, will have to be launched to calm the blinding fear rippling through the community.

Traditional modes of military warfare have had to change due the asymmetry of the borderless, stateless terrorist threat. The government is now obliged to rethink, if not redraw, its entire national security structure to deal with destabilizing threat of homicidal youth violence.

Turf wars inevitably develop between separate ministries of the police and military.  Military leaders, trained to do soldierly work, have traditionally viewed the deployment of their soldiers to do police patrol work as being infra dig.

If, as it appears, the military is fated to evolve into a kind of national service corps along the lines of that in Costa Rica, it seems only sensible that that vision be sketched out, studied and developed under one minister. 

The turnaround time to move from policy vision to research to plan of action takes at least three years; already there’s no time to lose.

Unfortunately, it is a feature of politics that no matter how urgent and critical the objectives to be met, a prime minister’s cabinet reshuffle is never a pure exercise of simply matching brains, personality and skill-set to portfolios. 

There are always the hidden collateral questions of balancing the power dynamics of the Cabinet and massaging the bruised egos of demoted ministers. 

In the case of former Minister of National Security, Carlos Perdomo, the PM was a little less than forthright – he cannot tell a lie – in stating as he did that the unified Ministry of National Security was too big for one man to handle. 

It is closer to the truth that Minister Perdomo’s retention of the Defence portfolio, along with Immigration, was really designed, in the language of the vernacular, to leave a respectable teat dangling from the underbelly of government in the ministerial mouth of Perdomo. 

Why, incidentally, Minister Perdomo should retain any piece of a security portfolio is aggravating when it is obvious that he, a marriage and family counselor, is eminently better suited to dealing with social service issues.

Making Senator Doug Singh the new Minister of the Police may raise more than a few eyebrows locally and externally. He wields political influence as Chairman of the United Democratic Party and is a savvy businessman but brings no experience in law and order matters. 

But he may well bring a level of energy, and organizational and managerial competence the Ministry sorely needs.  Mr. Singh doesn’t exactly cut the figure of a tough, encrusted enforcer.

He doesn’t need to if he can intelligently consult and marshal the available national talent, skills, resources and ideas to come up with a plan of action that is actually followed through systematically. 

The new minister of police should be clear about one thing. He can confront crime, but he cannot defeat it.  There is no glory to be harvested from that particular portfolio, only a public pillorying.

He should set for himself the task of crafting clear-minded policies and structures for a series of future ministers of police to gradually build upon. 

The crime crisis became what it is after decades of institutional and socio-economic neglect. It will take a very long time for a series of serious governments to right it. 

Assigning the Ministry of Youth to the Minister of Education Patrick Faber but giving the Ministry of Sports to Minister of the Public Service, John Saldivar, makes no sense.

That particular split was obviously designed to equalize the addition of new portfolios between Ministers Faber and Saldivar to preserve the balance of power in Cabinet and prevent ministerial jealousy.

Why not go straight for one unified Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports with one budget to tackle the burgeoning problem of homicidal youth violence?  Youth and Sports are really, when you think about it, indivisible.

What the PM described as a “radical” reorganization to grapple the crime situation is really neither radical nor convincing; just more of the same old political balancing act.

The PM’s disjointed explanation for appointing as the new Attorney General, Mr. B. Q. Pitts, the law partner of Wilfred Elrington, the former Attorney General, is that Mr. Pitts, an experienced Magistrate’s Court practitioner, would know how to plug the loopholes in the criminal justice system.

Mr. Pitts has neither the wits nor the wherewithal to research, study and craft criminal justice white papers to rebalance the criminal justice process to engender an equality of arms. 

He lacks the standing, despite his senior counsel status, to meaningfully engage and command leadership of the legal and judicial fraternity. 

Mr. Barrow – who cannot tell a lie – should be asked why he now sees fit to appoint as the country’s Attorney General a man whom he described in 1992 as a “boot-licking, ambulance-chasing lawyer”.

With the prime minister passing off stale, half-baked dishes from his kitchen Cabinet as nouveau cuisine, should we bother waiting around to taste his anti-crime dessert?

Copyright ©2010 Godfrey Smith

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