Special Meeting to be Held on Amendment to Petrocaribe Loans Act

Julius Espat

In light of Wednesday’s meeting between the prime minister and the unions, we asked Espat if he has reached out to the social partners for their position on the proposed amendments.  While the P.U.P. is yet to do so formally, a special meeting will be held on Friday where all interested parties have been invited to share their opinions on the suggested changes.  The consultation, according to Espat, is a catholic undertaking.

Isani Cayetano

“Have you had a chance to discuss with the social partners, in this case I would want to believe the unions, seeing as though they recently met with the P.M. with regards to these very same proposed amendments.  Have you had a chance to discuss with them to find out specifically what came out of yesterday’s meeting?”

Julius Espat, Deputy Leader, P.U.P.

“No.  But we’re having a meeting tomorrow and it’s not only the unions.  We have called a meeting and we’ve sent out invitations to nearly everybody as social partners, the business community and the churches, the unions.  And not one specific union, many unions and anybody that is interested.  At that meeting we will have our attorneys present.  I will be present and other members of the party will be present and at that meeting we will be explaining to them in detail what our objections are, why we are objecting to it and why we believe that the entire loans act should be repealed.  We are giving them our point of view from a legal standpoint.  We will be giving them our point of view from a political standpoint.  But more importantly we will be giving them our point of view based on the rule of law and good governance and that’s the only thing that we can do as an opposition, apart from going to the courts to establish when something is going wrong.  And people criticize us at times as the opposition and say well you guys are only opposing it.  Everything in Belize becomes political but people fail to realize that as the party in opposition it is our responsibility to highlight things when they are wrong.  But we are not trying to grandstand on it.  We believe that everybody has to be a part of it and if you notice everybody has been putting their opinions forward, even though we are the ones that have done the claim, even though we are the ones that have been pushing it in the National Assembly.  We believe that we shouldn’t impose our opinion to the Belizean people, we just need to express it to them, share it to them and then they will have to come up with their own opinion based on what we are saying and based on what the prime minister is also saying.”