U.D.P. lambastes government over debt, S.S.B.
With the People’s United Party well on the road to mass suicide the opposition U.D.P. needs to do little more than occasionally stir the pitcher of Kool-Aid. And that’s what it did today at a briefing called to criticise the government’s miscues already so amply chronicled by the media. News Five’s Janelle Chanona reports.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
This morning the United Democratic Party called a press conference in Belize City to discuss four main issues, the recently implemented General Sales Tax, education, the Senate report on the Social Security and national debt.
G.S.T.
Gaspar Vega, First Deputy Leader, U.D.P.
?Hard ears pickney go dah market two time. But this time, it?s a very costly lesson for all Belizeans. And let me tell you that the cry of our people is that they can?t take any more punishment. They are fully aware that for the first time, the general public is going to be paying G.S.T./P.U.P. VAT on a utility like electricity. Imagine ten percent more on any account of a hundred and fifty dollars or more. We believe the G.S.T. needs fixing. We will not be following the P.U.P. with loud pledges of abolition. For abolition would be just as harmful, perhaps more harmful to consumers and businesses than it was in 1999. But it needs fixing and we stand ready to work with all Belizeans to design the best fix when we become the new government, because we will become the next government.?
Education
Patrick Faber, Area Rep, Collet
?We need to hold those persons who are in a position of authority, who hold those posts, the Chief Education Officer, the persons who is heading the Examinations Unit, the Deputy Chief Education Officer, all of these people need to be put on a target based set-up. If every year we are failing the P.S.E., we are failing the BJAT, and we are not getting improvement, then I daresay those people need to be relieved of their duties. It is not an education issue alone. The crunch that we are feeling out there in terms of financing, in terms of paying all our bills, in terms of when we go to the grocery store, or go to school to pay our bills, the crunch that we are feeling, make no mistake is because of the mismanagement of the People?s United Party. They have mismanaged the finances of our country.?
Social Security
Wilfred Elrington, Standard Bearer, Pickstock
?If in fact when she was under one contract these things happened and then you gave her a new contract where she has done no wrong you might find it extremely difficult to terminate her lawfully. So it might well be a very diabolic and devious plan on the part of the P.U.P.s to now say that she?s got to go, because the very likelihood is that they will have to pay her the remainder of her salary for the remainder of the five years and she won?t have to do anything. Those are monies that will be coming out of your pocket and my pocket. We have got to take concerted action, take the bull by the horns, take back our country and save our future.?
Dean Barrow, Party Leader, U.D.P.
?The government can get the authorities in the states to trace the monies. The government can get the authorities in the states to freeze the money. And the government can get the authorities in this country to institute the sorts of prosecutions that will then entitle the authorities abroad to forfeit the money, to confiscate the money and to repatriate the money to return it to the people of this country and that is what we have to insist that the Government of Belize does.?
National Debt
Dean Barrow
?The people of this country need to understand exactly how bad the crisis is, and the people of this country have to understand exactly whose fault it is. What they will have great difficulty in doing, a new government will be able to achieve with a minimum of fuss. So we this morning alert the nation to what is taking place, but further more we call on the government in the context of all that has gone wrong. But particularly because we are now facing this issue of sovereign default to sit with the Opposition and work out a timetable for accelerated general elections.?
To bolster his position, Barrow and the U.D.P. point to a Standard and Poors document that puts Belize in a dangerous downward spiral of debt.
Dean Barrow
?The government calls it re-profiling–but this exercise that it is undertaking–it?s hired all sorts of brokerage firms and New York fancy lawyers at the cost of millions and millions of dollars to go to its creditors. That means that not just in terms of what we?ve been saying, but in terms of what Standard and Poors is saying. Belize has now reached a point to which the international rating agencies will consider that we have had to engage in selective default. This country will not be able to return to the commercial markets to do business for the foreseeable future. Ladies and Gentlemen, we as the constitutional opposition have to feel that in the context of all that has gone so horribly wrong and in the context of our country having to engage in this selective default that the government of this country–if there is even an ounce of nationalism left in it–must contemplate calling the general elections well before the constitutional due date of 2008.?
Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.
According to the United Democratic Party, the opposition will organise public demonstrations as part of its campaign to unseat the P.U.P.
