Senator Montejo says Belizeans are living a nightmare

Collet Montejo

Today the Senate met in Belmopan to ratify the 2013/2014 budget. It is a forum which traditionally gets little attention, and more often than not the galleries are absolutely empty, but that doesn’t seem to stop the members from airing the issues in great detail and at great length. House meetings have to a large extent become a predictable mix of rhetoric, grandstanding and personal attacks all divided perfectly along the political line. In the Senate, there is more attention paid to issues and less to personal attacks, but there is still a measure of grandstanding and, as News Five found out today, the political division is not an artificial border, but a clearly defined and formidable wall. We start with comments from Opposition Senator Collet Montejo, who says that Belizeans are living a nightmare.

Collet Montejo, P.U.P. Senator

“Fun and joke aside, we are locked in a nightmare. And when we are awake, we witness a government that finds ease with a use of bandage approaches to a country in dire crisis. We, the majority poor, are becoming more poor and more Belizeans are becoming poor. We are a people contaminated with hopelessness, engulfed in poverty and languishing in pain and suffering. Mister President, we result according to Doctor Gayle in a state of civil war. We are killing each other. We are a frustrated people Mister President. And this Mister President, after spending according to my colleague, Senator Joy, thirty-six million and according to what she said and last year’s budget estimate, fifteen million of poverty alleviation. We must stop to ask the hardest sensible question that so many have evaded. Apart from Boots Martinez building multiple personal residences, Mark King’s newly acquired funds to attend the casino and Rene Montero’s stately houses in Houston and around the world, where are the benefits to the poor? How many have been truly impacted? If these programs are being implemented to alleviate poverty, how is it that poverty in our country has increased?  We know that one hundred and forty-four thousand Belizeans are now making less than five dollars per day; les that five dollars per day.”