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[Excerpt]
When I first came to Belize at the time
of its independence in 1981, this former British colony in Central
America had an old-fashioned telephone system, fresh water piped in to
nearly all towns and villages, and electricity that worked most of the
time. These utilities were all in public ownership- assets that, however
indirectly, were still the property of the Belizean people. Nothing was
very cheap, but nothing was very expensive.
Today, the telephone company, Belize Telecommunications, is owned by
Lord Ashcroft, the former treasurer of the Conservative Party; Belize
Water Services by a British/Malaysian company called Biwater Shellabear;
and the country's electricity supply is dominated by a Canadian
hydro giant called Fortis Inc. All three of these companies which
take their dividends in US dollars - are bleeding the people and
economy of Belize dry.
And now the postal service and post office, the public works department,
the prison system and the port authority have been thrown into the fire
sale of government goodies, as the People's United Party government
searches desperately for funds to keep itself afloat. Essentially, the
government will sell off Belize's assets to any foreigner who comes
along with a few million dollars to spare. The ministry of housing
is rumoured to be next.
Meanwhile, the Pine Ridge Forest Reserve (recently destroyed by pine
bark beetles) has been leased for 50 years to a Canadian company for
"reforestation", earning Belize $2m. The company, by planting trees,
will earn "carbon credits"; under the1997 Kyoto Protocol on global
warming, these can then be sold to Canadian power producers to offset
their excessive carbon production.
Anger at the monopoly activities of Belize Tele-communications boiled
over a few days before Christmas, when it delivered a surprise package
of "price cuts". These cuts amounted to a small slice off the
astronomical internet and overseas telephone charges, but a heavy
increase in the local call, connection and service rates, which were
already high. For example, line access and maintenance, which netted the
company $10m in 2000, will now go up from $8 a month to $20 a month for
residential phones, and from $20 a month to $50 a month for business
phones. All software that can bypass the telephone system is banned; the
telephone company is the exclusive "server"; and even aids such as
Winfax are illegal. Users of the new "boxes" that allow cheap
international telephone and internet connections are liable to large
fines and even imprisonment.
Historically, Belize was dependent for its survival on sugar, citrus,
bananas, fish and shrimp and, more recently, eco-tourism. It has been
brought to its knees by a combination of the US-led World Trade
Organisation drive against the Commonwealth preferential trade system
and the sell-off of its public utilities to monopoly foreign
ownership; 70 per cent of Belize's foreign earnings now go to paying off
loans and meeting foreign-owned utility bills.
Within weeks of the sale of the water supply last year - the bill
for this went through parliament at such speed that nobody had time to
read it - Biwater Shellabear announced that it was raising the cost of
sewerage connection from $80 to more than $1,000, then that it would not
spend the $140m which it had promised on new capital investment because
the company had been "tricked" in the fine print of the original
purchase agreement.
Fortis, which now has control of Belize's electricity for 50 years,
wants to build a new hydro dam. It is opposed by a remarkable alliance
including not only Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World
Wildlife Fund, but also, it is claimed, Princess Anne, Robert F Kennedy
Jr and the actor Harrison Ford (see stopfortis).
The valleys and plains that will be flooded if the dam is built are
breeding areas for wildlife unique to Central America and home to a
number of Mayan temples and archeological sites, as yet unexcavated.
This area is the base of spectacularly beautiful attractions upon which
Belize's entire inland tourism economy is dependent.
It has recently emerged that the bedrock at the site for the new dam is
riddled with faults and was wrongly identified as granite by the experts
from Fortis. According to one geologist: "The dam could collapse under
pressure and wipe out entire towns and villages downstream."
"It's about bullying, it's about profiteering, it's a boondoggle that is
the worst example of globalisation," said Robert F Kennedy Jr, an
environmental lawyer and nephew of John F Kennedy, after he flew over
the dam site just before Christmas. "A billion-dollar international
company is going to enrich itself by impoverishing the people of
Belize." The company has started bulldozing to get roads into the site,
while denying in public that it has begun work.
Not all the members of the People's United Party are happy about the
turn of events. Jorge Espat resigned in disgust as party chairman and
minister of security. "Too few control too much," he said, "and too many
have too little, a condition made worse by the conversion of public
assets into unregulated private monopolies. How can we celebrate
prosperity for the few? Trickle-down economics is a damned failure, and
globalisation as we have experienced it so far will make us greater
servants."
The people of Belize are fighting back, with all social classes and all
ethnic groups - Creole, Garifuna, Mayan, mestizo, Chinese, east Indian,
Lebanese or European - for once united. What worries the chamber of
commerce is the shortage of US dollars, as the country's currency
reserves are drained by payments to foreign-owned companies. All
shipping companies into Belize now demand US dollars in advance, and
Lord Ashcroft himself complains that he cannot get his dividends in
dollars.
Even Belize's normally pacific Mennonite farmers, the backbone of the
farming industry, are protesting because they are unable to get US
dollars for fertilisers and animal feed.
Three weeks of marches in Belize City against the new telephone charges
prompted the government to impose an order forcing the company to revert
to the tariffs charged before 1 December, though the company insists
that customers must pay the higher rates for the month of December. A
march in the capital city of Belmopan against Fortis and its plans for
the new dam led the government hastily to bus in a counter-march.
Unfortunately, when they were interviewed on television, the
pro-government marchers didn't know what they were marching for...
This is the second article in a New Statesman series on
privatisation around the world
© The Author © New Statesman Ltd. 2001. All rights
reserved. Please contact the publisher.
The New Statesman is registered as a newspaper in the
UK and the USA.
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