Opposition says budget doesn’t measure up to promises
The new budget was the subject of debate today in the House of Representatives. And if the spotlight was on the Prime Minister last week when he first presented the budget, today the Opposition took the floor, and held on to it for hours. U.D.P. Leader Dean Barrow characterized the budget, which boasts an operating surplus of eleven point eight million dollars, as being woven of an invisible cloth just like in the fairy tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition, U.D.P.
“In the months leading up the August, 1998 General Elections we were told of the extraordinary transformation that would be worked when the P.U.P. came to power. There would be a new and shining society, weaved from the fabric of no victimization, no VAT, no replacement for VAT, no interference with the judiciary, no debt, no Taiwan, no Business Tax, no crime.
From this magical bolt of cloth would come remnants of great glory for the Belizean people: an end to poverty and joblessness, a massive concentration of resources in education and health care. Unprecedented foreign investment in cutting edge industries in Belize; undreamed-of local private sector expansion and a citadel of democracy based on a comprehensive profound compact with civil society and the social partners.
Today, Madame Speaker, not seven months later and not withstanding the pretended new close of the 1999-2000 budget, the cry of not one little child but thousands upon thousands of Belizeans is this, the Honorable the Prime Minister is as naked as a jay bird.”
Barrow said that it is the U.D.P. and not the P.U.P. that deserves the credit for any improvement to the nation’s economy in the last year. He also took issue with the introduction of the Gaming Act, which he says should go to a national referendum and the sale of government shares in B.E.L.
