U.D.P.’s process against mayor shows accountability says PM

Belize City Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers has a number of legal battles in court. Attorney Hubert Elrington is challenging on her behalf, the legality of Patrick Tillett as Financial Director at City Hall and her other lawyer, Michael Peyrefitte, is defending her on twenty-two counts of Uttering a False Document and violating City Council Regulations. Godfrey Smith and Elson Kaseke are filing an injunction in her name on the validity of her removal from the national party council. Prime Minister Barrow said that the mayor’s application is misconceived because the process that the U.D.P. has embarked on regarding the mayor is one designed to ensure accountability, even if it means her dismissal from the party.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“There is a case before the courts and there is a hearing—all I will say is what the party said in its press release after it became clear that the mayor was taking the party to court. No member of the party can be free from the obligation to account to the party and the process that the party has embarked on regarding the mayor is one designed to ensure that accountability. I feel—if I might be allowed to respectfully say so—that the mayor’s application to the court is fully misconceived because from what I have seen, it seems to be based on the argument that due process was denied when in fact everything that the party has done and is doing is in accordance with the party’s constitution and indeed is a multi-layered process to ensure that anybody against whom the party feels it is necessary to initiate some kind of inquiry, is given due process. After the inquiry, if the central executive feels that the matter could be proceeded with further, it invites the member whose conduct is in question to respond to written charges that the central executive will formulate. After the member responds in writing to those charges, if the central executive is not satisfied with the response, then it refers the matter to the Ethics and Integrity Committee, which then invites the member to an oral hearing, at which representation is accorded to the member—representation by any senior person of the party. After that oral hearing is completed, the Ethics and Integrity—if it is satisfied that the charges have been made out—can then proceed to impose any of a number of sanctions, the most extreme of which is dismissal.”