One Week to Go Before Elections: John Briceño Feeling Confident

We are seven days away from the General Elections and P.U.P. Leader John Briceño is feeling very confident that his party will form the next government. Briceño and his party have been campaigning on an anti-corruption and reform ticket; he says that in his first one hundred days in office, an aggressive move in rooting out corruption will take place.  Briceño says that several changes will be made in order to allow oversight bodies such as the offices of the Auditor General and the Contractor General, Integrity Commission and the Public Accounts Committee to properly carryout their duties without any hindrance.

John Briceño

John Briceño, Leader of the Opposition

“We have also said, we cannot run a billion dollar in effect company which is the government of Belize and you don’t audit. Anybody can tell you if you want to borrow for your small business fifty thousand dollars they are telling you that you have to bring your audited financial statements. The government of Belize goes every year to parliament and they approve a billion dollars budget with hardly any kind of accountability. We have said we want to strengthen the auditor general office to make sure that they can have a budget that they can be able to audit every single department in government. We don’t have to hire more people. They can contract people to come and help them with that. Secondly, that they can also have subpoena powers because as it is right now they go to an office and when they ask for certain records they are not given the attention. They are ignored. Or no records are given to them. So they have subpoena powers to they can present a subpoena and if they don’t present the records people can be locked up in jail. Thirdly, that they can have their own budget. As it is right now the Ministry of Finance controls their budget. Whenever they want to go an investigate the area where somebody in the powers that be don’t want that to happen they squeeze them, they don’t give them the money and they can’t go and do their investigation. Thirdly is the Contractor General also have that independence. Also have a board that can help in reviewing and supervising the work o the Contractor General. We said the Public Accounts Committee will no longer be controlled by the government. We have to ensure that we can invite one  of the social partners from the senate to be there so that the government does not have an outright majority to stop any kind of investigation. We are talking about the Integrity Commission, we are looking at the possibility of putting it as part of the Anti Corruption Commission but more importantly is that the Integrity Commission will not be controlled by the party in government. They can again have more independence, have all the necessary powers that they need to be able to investigate any representative any minister and any head of department and also that they can control their own government.”