New citrus board to review investment deal
At their last gathering, shouting matches, fights for the microphone, and mass resignations set the precedent for meetings of the Citrus Growers Association at an all time low. But word out of the south tonight is that Saturday’s Annual General Meeting of the association was the model of discipline and democracy. Of course it helped that at the start of the meeting, members voted to adopt Robert’s Rules on parliamentary procedure to keep the peace. The first order of business on Saturday was the election of a new management committee. All nine members stepped down and after fourteen nominations from the floor were accepted, voting began. When the ballots were tallied, Frank Redmond had received the most votes, one hundred and thirty-two. The rest of the management committee will be made up of Vice-Chair Charles Woods Junior and growers: David Hayles, Steve St. Cyr, Simon Willacey, Dwight Montero, Richard Pollack, Ernesto Saqui, and Bert Faux. As for the fate of the investment deal that has sparked so much controversy in the industry, Redmond says the new board has already been instructed to review the deal.
Frank Redmond, Chairman, C.G.A.
“We had a very clear resolution and therefore a very clear mandate from the floor and that was for the Committee to look at the economic benefits of the investment agreement as regards particularly to the value added portion and then having accessed it, report back to the growers with recommendations for a decision. So the work has already started, in fact it started about a month ago and I would imagine probably six weeks to two months. We have a lot of financial projections to study and this will be looked at very carefully and then we should report to the growers on the situation.”
“Before one can arrive at a conclusion like that you have got to show the economic benefit to growers. So far nobody has clearly done that and I think it would be wrong to prejudge which one is going to go. One has to keep an open mind. And we will look at this and look at the economic benefits and the growers will make the decision based on the economics benefits. So for right now, one has to keep an open mind and not prejudge it and I certainly won’t wish to do that.”
“Everybody can now relax because the people who have been elected are those who the growers as a whole wished to be elected.”
Janelle Chanona
“So you are feeling pretty good that at least now you can see some light at the end of this tunnel of controversy?”
Frank Redmond
“Absolutely. We had to go beyond that and the association and its membership demonstrated maturity. We had a very interesting meeting, it was filled of lively debate and we discussed the issues and we voted on them. And everybody respects the wishes of the majority of the growers which is what democracy is. I thought it was a wonderful demonstration of democracy within the industry.”
Of note is that staunch opponent to the investment deal, Denzil Jenkins was nominated to the new board but, having only received sixty-nine votes, was not elected to serve on the management committee.
In other news from the citrus industry, tonight we understand that an arbitration panel to mediate the dispute between the association and Citrus Products of Belize Limited over the price formulas for this year and last year is being established. While the factory and the growers have nominated Senator Godwin Hulse as the chairman of the panel, he has yet to officially accept the post.
