By: Omar Silva  

National Perspective Belize – Digital 2025

www.nationalperspectivebz.com

Belize City: Monday 7th April 2025

In the heart of Belmopan, where vendors, farmers, and ordinary Belizeans hustle to earn a living under the sun, a storm is brewing—and it is not from the clouds, but from City Hall itself. Under the leadership of newly elected Mayor Pablo Cawich, the Belmopan City Council has launched a campaign that reeks of political arrogance, legal overreach, and alarming disregard for the very people who voted them into office.

At the center of this controversy is the Belmopan Market Plaza, a vibrant, inclusive commercial hub that has served as an economic lifeline for small-scale vendors, farmers, and informal entrepreneurs. Established under a 30-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) by the former Mayor Sharon Palacio in 2021, the Plaza was never a handout—it was a practical solution to a persistent urban problem: limited market space and lack of funds to expand the official municipal market.

Rather than build on a working model, Mayor Cawich has chosen to bulldoze it—figuratively and soon perhaps literally.

In a shocking move, his council—armed with a lawyer’s pen instead of the people's mandate—declared the MOU “null and void,” branding it as ultra vires and illegitimate. Their target? Not some foreign corporate predator or corrupt contractor, but a Belizean businessman who invested huge sums of money into developing a market that serves dozens of small vendors and thousands of Belmopan residents.

Let’s be clear: the ultra vires argument is not a legal ruling. It is a political assertion, a convenient tool being weaponized by a council that appears more focused on erasing the legacy of its predecessor than serving the people.

How does one explain this callousness? Why would a People’s United Party (PUP) municipal government attack a people’s market? Why force small vendors, many of whom survive on week-to-week earnings, to jump through bureaucratic hoops and pay burdensome fees—under threat of eviction?

Why now?

What has changed between the 2021 MOU and April 2025—other than the names on the Council’s letterheads and possibly the interest of politically connected developers?

Let’s not kid ourselves: this is not about legality. It is about power, pride, and political pettiness.

If the former mayor overstepped her bounds, let the courts decide—not the whims of a new administration eager to flex muscle. But in the meantime, the Plaza should be preserved, protected, and perhaps even expanded—not undermined.

To evict vendors on a technicality while offering no immediate solution for where they should go is not governance—it is governance by cruelty.

Mayor Cawich and his council must remember: the people of Belmopan did not vote for displacement. They voted for progress. They voted for solutions, not vendettas. They voted for leaders who would uplift local enterprise, not crush it beneath the weight of political ego.

If the Cawich Council proceeds down this path, they must be held accountable—not just in court, but in the court of public opinion and at the ballot box when the time comes.

The people are watching. So is history.