House meeting covers debt, crime, passports
It’s the place where the business of Belize’s lawmaking gets done and our duly elected representatives can shift from statesmanship to gutter politics quicker than you can say “Madam Speaker”. News 5’s Janelle Chanona reports from Independence Hill on today’s spirited session of the House of Representatives.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
During this morning’s sitting of the House of Representatives in Belmopan, the members prepared to wade through a particularly thick set of orders of the day. But certain matters on the agenda warranted special attention. The first being the crime situation, and the figures presented by Minister of Home Affairs Max Samuels were not comforting.
Maxwell Samuels, Min. of Home Affairs
“In the three years period from January 1999 to June of the current year, police statistics show the following: in 1999, fifty-six cases of murder were reported, twenty-one were unsolved, thirty-five were solved. In 2000, forty-six cases were reported, twenty-four were unsolved and twenty-four were solved. Since the year began, forty-two cases have been reported. Thirteen are not yet solved and twenty-eight were solved by the police. The situation as shown from the statistics is of concern to my ministry and my government.”
According to the minister, initiatives to combat the problem are already in place.
Maxwell Samuels
“Two additional Magistrates are already in post, and the third will take up duties shortly. The middle floor of the Paslow Building is being transformed into additional courts in order to fast track all cases of serious crimes, especially those including the use of guns, violence, rape, robbery, burglary, drug trafficking, aggravated assaults and murder.”
But Samuels was still in the hot seat as the next topic on the table involved accusations of scandal in the Immigration Department. Reports appearing in the Opposition press this week have accused top government officials of granting Belizean citizenship and passports to ineligible persons.
Maxwell Samuels
“The Director of Immigration has confirmed that all passports signed by him on July twelfth, 2002 and all other times, were signed because all necessary requirements were met. He further states that as a matter of practise, passports are signed and issued in Belize City only on Fridays as that is the only day that the director travels to Belize City for that purpose.”
“The accusation, I repeat, is blatantly malicious and misleading, not to mention the fact of poor journalism.”
But outside the House, the Leader of the Opposition was ready to dispute the Minister’s claims.
Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
“We have documentary proof. This is material obtained from inside, deep inside the bowels of the Immigration Department. There are people there who are extremely concerned about what has been happening and they were the ones who decided to spill the beans. We would not have gone to press with a story of this nature, for which we could clearly get into serious trouble, if we were not certain that we could prove all that we are saying.”
“I don’t think that it is anything that in fact will result in any sort of a legal process. I think that at this stage, being in opposition, not controlling either the police or the office of the D.P.P., we have to be satisfied with making the political capital out of this thing, the political capital which it deserves. By that I mean we really need to, again, have the public develop and even greater sense of outrage over things such as this happening.”
Back in session, the talk turned to money, specifically the one hundred and twenty-five million U.S. dollars Government is planning to obtain through a bond issue to partially refinance the national debt. Minister of Budget Management Ralph Fonseca says the move is the sensible thing to do given the circumstances faced by the country.
Ralph Fonseca, Min. of Budget Management
“When I was a younger man, I had a fine mop of hair on my head. As my hair started to recede, I was force to chop it low; I had to restructure. The Honourable Leader of the Opposition when he was attacked in the same way by age, peeled his off. He had to restructure. We are facing the facts of changing circumstances, the Leader of the Opposition and myself. So I would have thought that he would have understood that with a changing world, with everyone restructuring their debt, that for Belize to continue to be internationally competitive, we would also have to restructure our debt. We’re not only restructuring our debt, we’re restructuring the way we do business in general, just like every other country, every other company in the world.”
Dean Barrow
“There is nothing so hot about borrowing at a ten percent rate of interest over ten years but admittedly it is better than what has been happening in the immediate past. So if the monies are properly used, it will provide some relief. But it is as though the government is saying, give us praise for having broken your leg in the first place because we are now going to put it in a cast and try to make it better.”
“It’s not enough for you to say, we assure you there’s two hundred and fifty million Belize dollars worth of debts that’s already in the books that we have to repay maybe over five years at thirteen percent rate of interest. Let us see that, so that we can have some assurance that you’re telling us the truth.”
And there also seems to be some dispute between Fonseca and Barrow about how much money Belize actually owes.
Ralph Fonseca
“The public debt of Belize, the entire public debt of Belize is about six hundred million U.S. dollars. the entire public and publicly guaranteed debt is six hundred million dollars.”
Dean Barrow
“Right after he said that, Mr. Fonseca went on to talk about the securization position. The fact is that all the international agencies will tell you that those securitization proceeds represent in effect a call upon the national economy, so they are treated as part of your debt profile, and he will not concede this. But anybody else you talk to, who knows about these things, will tell you that it is so. So once you begin to include that, you right away start jumping another three or four hundred million dollars. There is no way that the debt is less than around one point seven billion dollars. And he perhaps was talking also only about disbursed debt. There is in addition to disbursed, what you’ve already drawn down, what you’ve been committed to, loans that you’ve already signed on to, but you haven’t started to draw down yet. When you put everything together, you’re talking about one point seven billion and counting.”
Reporting for News 5, I am Janelle Chanona.
During today’s sitting of the House, a total of eight bills were passed. These included legislation to privatise management of the prison and airport, alter electoral boundaries in the Stann Creek District, regulate the telecommunications industry and conform to new trading arrangements between CARICOM and Cuba. At the end of the session, the Leader of the Opposition ran down a list of PUP representatives and insiders who have been sold government land at bargain prices. In reply, the Minister of Natural Resources pointed to an even longer list of politically motivated land grants perpetrated by the previous administration.
