Social partners say PAC hearings are a charade

Leroy Flowers

The social partners: the Belize Chamber of Commerce, the Council of Churches, Evangelical Churches and the N.T.U.C.B. say they cannot support the current hearings of the Public Accounts Committee which comprises only of government representatives. Two weeks ago, the social partners in a release said that the hearings as they stand are a charade. Cannon Flowers says that government need not fear the PAC beucase the government couldn’t be brought down through the PAC.

Canon Leroy Flowers

“You cannot investigate yourself, the church is very clear. Now I’ve heard the argument that that’s not the way democracy works. If we really love this nation if we truly want to hold people accountable. The accounts committee don’t have any authority to put people on jail. The account committee as I have been made to understand is to examine how government has spent its resources, empowered to do so and to try to stop as the word would have it the haemorrhaging or whatever, that’s all the accounts committee has to do. But also the accounts committee as we understand can’t go three years outside of their purview. You have been appointed for this period so it is in this period the moneys had been spent, that our understanding. Now remember we are not lawyers but we seek the best legal minds not only local but foreign to help us to better interpret these things. And it is therefore the accounts committee can be structured in the way that will help the process rather than seeking to attack. Because this is the problem we are having, it is a game we are playing with our political parties, and what i find very sad in our politics in Belize is that when you are in a position the government can do no right at all, absolutely no right, and when you get into power, the very same thing that you are criticizing, just fits in and move the boat merely, merely along,. So that un the accounts committee we feel the government has nothing to fear, they are not going to over throw them in that national assembly, they are not going to have a vote of no confidence because they have the majority, that why they are the government. We need to look at this thing in an objective and also you see the problem we having our leaders is that on both sides of our house, You have to be bigger than your personal political persuasion; this is about our nation, about Belize.”