GOB’s break up with Channel 5 raises concerns for The Heritage Foundation

‘Suspending normal relations’ is destined to be the number one break-up line for 2010. It became popular ever since Cabinet’s December seventh public advisory announcing that the government would not allow public officers and ministers to participate in interviews with Channel Five.  Well in addition to the CPJ, there is another respected international organization that has recently voiced its concern about the media ban. The Heritage Foundation is a leading research and educational think-tank in the United States; it has published a critical review of the government’s recent attitude towards what it calls “market-based democracy”. It has posted an article on its website, written by James M. Roberts.

james roberts

Regarding the government breakup with Channel Five and shake up of the Supreme and Appeals Court justices, Roberts wrote that “the executive branch has attacked the independence of the country’s judiciary, prompting many distinguished jurists to resign. It has also begun to harass owners of media outlets. Roberts perceives the Barrow administration as playing Hugo Chavez’s populist politics of deprivation of private property, centralization of power in the executive (in the name of the people), attacks on the independence of the judiciary and a crackdown on private media and freedom of expression. The review points to the take-over in August 2009 of Telemedia without compensating the owners. Roberts urges that the Obama Administration should express the concern of the U.S. government about this pattern of behavior by the government of Belize and urge it to return to the path toward market-based democracy from which it appears to have strayed.”