Belmopan, Belize 6 September (BelizeBlog.com) Former Belize Attorney General Godfrey Smith has published a commentary on the recent expropriation of the largest company in the country – Belize Telemedia Ltd. by the government of Prime Minister Dean Barrow. Entitled, “And Now For My Second Trick’, the essay gives an excellent insight into the behind-the-scenes machinations involved in the takeover of the telephone company once owned by British peer Lord Michael Aschcroft:
The magician’s assistants worked feverishly behind the scenes to prepare him for the second part of the show. The second part would be more difficult to perform, especially since there was no script for it. It would have to be played out in real time with unknown actors and no script.
And Now For My Next Trick
A political magician confidently takes center stage before a national audience of 300,000.
He is staking his reputation and maybe also his career on this trick.
Carefully but with poise, he draped his black magician’s cloth over the cash rich, $30 million-a-year private phone company and before Belizeans could say “Badass Barrow!” he deftly yanked it away.
Voila! The private phone company was government owned.
The magician he bowed deeply from the waist in appreciation for the spontaneous standing ovation of deafening applause ripping across the nation.
He had outdone himself. Not only had he magically converted a real, live private company into a government-owned one, but he had made its mighty, larger-than-life, feared and ruthless billionaire owner, Lord Ashcroft, actually disappear.
His name, to be sure, would go down as one of the most dazzling political magicians in the country, if not the region.
