Musa defends his government’s actions

After trying all day to get an official reaction from government we received a call from the Press Office around five-thirty that the Prime Minister, after a long day of meetings, was in a position to talk. News 5’s Stewart Krohn is just back in the studio with that tape…here’s what Said Musa had to say.

Prime Minister Said Musa
?If I may begin by saying that I have maintained government?s consistent commitment to ensure participation by employees of B.T.L. and other Belizeans in having the opportunity to own a substantial interest in B.T.L. That commitment remains, that commitment was reaffirmed when I met yesterday with union representatives. The difficulty has been that the union representatives have adopted a position that they wanted these shares, the thirty-seven percent that the government now holds, free or for one dollar, and as a responsible government there is no way I could have to agree to that. So we were not able to reach any agreement about the sale of shares to employees. But I indicated to them that that commitment remains and that we should work towards finding a mechanism of how financing can be obtained for them to participate in the ownership and control of B.T.L. What happened on Friday morning was that some technicians of B.T.L. decided to and indeed brought down the entire system, the telecommunications system of our country, of B.T.L. This has resulted in causing great harm and damage to our country. Great security interests have been damaged. Our national security has been jeopardized. The life and the safety of our people have been put in jeopardy, endangered. Our economic interests and commercial interest as a country, as a people, have been harmed by this. And so it is incumbent on government to ensure that we get back up this system as soon as possible, and we have been working towards that objective. The P.U.C. has intervened because the B.T.L. technicians who have been given opportunities on many occasions earlier for them to reactivate the system and for one reason or another they did not and have so far up to this point been unable to or have refused to. I gather that I must say very clearly that this does not apply to all B.T.L. technicians. Some have been cooperating with the P.U.C. technicians that have been brought in, as well as a gentleman from Nortel, which is the company that set up the system in the first place, so I would imagine be very familiar with the codes and with the whole computerized system in place. That is now going on and we are hopeful, and indeed we are insisting and doing everything possible to bring up the system as soon as possible.?

Stewart Krohn, Editor, News 5
?Prime Minister, what is so special about the B.T.L. employees that government would go to such great lengths to facilitate their purchase of B.T.L.??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?Well these employees, many of them have worked for many years to build up B.T.L.. They have invested their talent, their time, their lives in some cases I would say, dedicated to this company, and they feel, and I believe with some justification, that they have put a great stake in the building up of this company and that others have come in and taken advantage of the product that they have developed–this is how they perceive it–and as I said, I believe that there is something to be said for that. So we feel an obligation to find a way to assist them to own shares in B.T.L. Of course any Belizean can purchase shares in B.T.L.?

Stewart Krohn
?Purchase shares from whom??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?The government will be making the shares available.?

Stewart Krohn
?So what you?re saying is at the same time you?re going to make shares available to B.T.L. employees, you will simultaneously make shares available to the public. It?s not the full thirty-seven percent that you intend to sell to the employees of B.T.L.??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?Well, if the employees of B.T.L., working with management, as we earlier understood it, could have put it off to find money to purchase the whole thirty-seven percent, we would have made it available to them, but clearly that has not come to pass. I must tell you that all along we were under the impression that this Sunrise group was representing executive employees as well as other employees of B.T.L., in some trust arrangement. It has transpired, based on the meeting that I heard yesterday, that there is some conflict going on in between management and union, that there is some mistrust going on among them, so it seems that that vehicle may not be viable anymore. But this is strictly a matter between them. But were saying that you all could have utilised this vehicle of Sunrise to raise the money, whether from the bank as they have been talking to a particular bank, or from wherever, that was not a matter of concern to the government, that they be made available to the company on the understanding that employees would have had a share in this to the extent that they wanted to.?

Stewart Krohn
But then Prime Minister, where is Sunrise now, I?m not quite getting you. What offers you are making and to whom are you making them??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?I think you?ll have to ask Sunrise where they are. What I?m saying, we will make the shares available to the employees and other Belizeans. Now, how do we envisage this working out? I believe we will have to give some period, maybe a matter of weeks when the shares become available to the employees as a matter of priority. It may end up that they cannot financially purchase the whole thirty-seven percent and then other Belizeans will be invited after that limited period to come in, if they so wish to purchase shares.?

Rene Mendez, Love Fm
?Sir, would you be able to say if anything has been communicated to you, how long will we be in the situation with the phone system. Has anything been communicated as to when the deadline will be to get the system back up, hundred percent running??

Prime Minister Said Musa
The latest communication I have is that at the present, several if not all B.T.L. technicians are now working along with the Nortel gentleman, the engineer in fact, to bring up the system, the international phone system, the internet, everything else, the cell system as soon as possible. But this is a highly technical matter totally beyond me, I should quickly add, and I can?t give you a deadline how soon they will bring it up. What I do believe is that initially, based on past experience, before the system was tampered with, and before sabotage took place, because it?s not just the coding system has been interfered with now or changed, but also there has been some sabotage of fibre optic cables as well. I mean serious damage has been done to this company and therefore I cannot say at this stage how long it will take for the entire system to be brought up, but I do know they are doing everything possible to.?

Rene Mendez
?Will anybody be charged with sabotage??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?I believe if the police have clear evidence of this act of vandalism, sabotage, or indeed some would even call it an act of terrorism, that person would have to be charged, yes.?

Stewart Krohn
?Prime Minister, a few months ago on a radio talk show, a caller was giving you some trouble and you kind of laughed and you said, ?What do you want me to do, resign?? It was a big laugh for everyone. Today the NTUCB has put on paper what many people in that movement have been thinking for a long time. They have called for your resignation. Are you still laughing??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?I have to treat it with a bit of humour, yes, because it is very clear to me that this whole thing is a political well-timed orchestrated conspiracy that has been going on. And I think the union–and I?m not accusing all union officials now, and certainly I?m not accusing the members of the union–but certainly in the leadership and in certain factions of the leadership of the NTUCB, they have been carrying out a clear political agenda for a long time, and they have made it clear not yesterday or today that they want my removal from government, from office. So it hasn?t come as any surprise that they would put it on paper. What I will say is that they speak that they represent fifteen thousand members; well I have a mandate coming from over fifty thousand Belizeans and I will have to speak to the Belizean people before I would even consider any such requests coming from the unions. So the whole thing is political; it?s very clear too that what has transpired with the B.T.L. issue is highly politically charged, it is a clear conspiracy going on here involving politics, the objective, the agenda being to try and illegally and unconstitutionally remove the government.?

Rene Mendez
?Being that the board meeting that was set for this morning did not take place, what now does this mean for the ruling that has taken place in Miami??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?Well we have been very conscious of that and the dangers involved in that and we have taken steps to inform our attorneys first and they in turn will inform the court that this is now an of ?force majeure? that it is beyond the competence of the government to have held the meeting, certainly in Belize, because we can?t communicate and the meeting would have taken place telephonically, not with all the board members coming to Belize. We were just not able to do so. I gather now that steps are now being taken to reschedule the meeting for later in the week.?

Stewart Krohn
?Prime Minister, just prior to the answer you just gave to Mr. Mendez?s question, you characterized the present crisis as something that is politically motivated. But Prime Minister, are you willing to admit that there is a large number of people who count themselves as your friends and supporters and even voted for you happily in the last election who are incredibly angry at the mess your government has brought this country to, not just with B.T.L., but with D.F.C., with S.S.B., with the whole, we needn?t go over that again. What is your message to those people who would want to support you, but are just unbelievably angry??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?You are telling me this Stewart and I am prepared to admit and concede that we have been facing certain difficulties which would genuinely and justifiably cause many of our supporters to be concerned, alarmed and angry. I believe the situation is that we have not done sufficient work to explain how we got into many of these difficulties, how these things came about, to pinpoint exactly what brought these things about. Obviously the opposition has played a very successful role in selling it to many people as government?s, what they call corruption or incompetence, or both. The issue to me is very clear. I am totally satisfied in my own mind that I have no evidence–I am certain though that there is no corrupt act hat has taken place on my part–and I have no evidence of any of my ministers being involved in any act of corruption. The potential corruption, if we may call it that, and wrongdoing as such…clearly we can look to certain people who might have been involved in the process, whether it be through D.F.C., through the SSB issue, or even the B.T.L. issue and say this is where the wrong took place. But what I am committed to doing to try and gain back the confidence and respect of all my friends and supporters of this great party is to do everything in my power to restore stability, economic stability and security to our country, to straighten out these things, to get things right and then to move ahead.?

Stewart Krohn
?Prime Minister could you characterize your relationship with Glenn Godfrey??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?One of deep rage and disappointment.?

Stewart Krohn
?Do you think Glenn Godfrey should face the Senate Select Committee examining Social Security and if he chooses not to testify, what would you do??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?I believe yes, that Mr. Godfrey should be called upon to explain his actions as far as the Intelco issue is concerned. If he refuses to, I would then have to take legal advice on what further can be done, but that?s a difficult issue Stewart.?

Stewart Krohn
?Prime Minister you characterize the acts of sabotage as…I forget the word you just used.?

Prime Minister Said Musa
?Irresponsible.?

Stewart Krohn
?Highly irresponsible acts. Would you like to look back at certain thing your government has done which have been similarly characterized as highly irresponsible acts and tell the Belizean people, or explain to the Belizean people as you offered to do a few minutes ago, why and how you got into those situations??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?I don?t know if you want to go down that road in any detail, but I can begin by saying that?let us take the B.T.L. issue. You will recall that when Carlisle took control of B.T.L., majority control, we were facing tremendous difficulties with them in terms of unilateral increasing rates on the people, testing, or putting everything in the judicial system, taking us to court for every little thing, right up to the Privy Council. In other words, it was not a healthy relationship for the company and its relation with the government. And telecommunications is of vital importance to any country, certainly to the economy of a country. So we sat down with Lord Ashcroft and got him to agree in the end to sell the majority control, the fifty-two percent, in B.T.L.. Now obviously he did not want to dispose of his shares, and so he made it difficult, and as a businessman I can?t blame him. But we were faced with a very tough negotiation with him in order to achieve the objective of finding another shareholder or shareholders who would work in what I then perceived to be the better interest of Belize. Now you may call that an error of judgment to think that that could be possible, but I think you need to take into account the difficulties that I was seeing. In other words, I don?t have anything person against Lord Ashcroft; he?s a major player in our economy in Belize. But I did perceive that in his ownership of B.T.L. We were not making progress, we were not making progress with the internet for schools programme, we were not making progress with expanding the service to rural communities, we were not making progress in bringing down rates as we had promised the Belizean people.?

Stewart Krohn
?Prime Minister, let me interrupt at this point because when faced with similar situations all over the Caribbean, what governments did was something different than what you did. They took a very above board, they established an above board process under which companies that were eager to come into the Caribbean, like Digicel of Ireland, like AT and T, like Cingular, like many different companies were put in a bidding situation that ultimately has worked just fine. What worked everywhere else didn?t seem to be a realistic alternative with you…instead you created what I can only call an unholy alliance with Glenn Godfrey. Granted you did that, you can?t look back on that now and think, Boy, what were we thinking when we did that??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?It?s easy with 20/20 hindsight to take that attitude Stewart. Yes, it has not worked out. If it had worked out, people would be smiling today, we would have three way competition with Intelco, Speednet and B.T.L.. That one did not work out. But I was coming on to the point that in order to get Carlisle to sell the shares, they insisted on an option deed and of course all this thing, it?s difficult to explain to people, ?Why would you agree to an option deed to sell back the shares if you couldn?t dispose of them, or properly dispose of them to a new buyer?? We did it because we were confident. And yes, I put my trust in this new company, I.C.C., when I say I, I mean my government. We did it because we looked at Mr. Prosser?s system that he had in place. You speak of these other companies but he had at least at that time, what was perceived as a very viable system in the US Virgin Islands, operating their system very successfully. It, all the litigation that came against them cause subsequently to all that. And that?s how he got into problems with being unable to pay for the B.T.L. shares. But all those things happened, if you like, when it rained, it poured. And yes, I had to face these difficulties. But I?m showing you how difficulties like that come about through no corrupt act, through no incompetence, but just things can go astray at times when you are dealing with hundreds of things in government, some of them will not work out…it happens to any government.?

Stewart Krohn
?The turning back, or the turning over control in B.T.L. to Mr. Ashcroft in the first place, incompetence? ?

Prime Minister Said Musa
?No, no. Well you might…we could go back and back and back but I mean…we saw the…?

Stewart Krohn
?But that seems to be at the root of where you begin to as you say, go astray or that was maybe the first of many of what you would call mistakes. What?s the justification for that? You had control of B.T.L., you turned it over to Michael Ashcroft. Yet at virtually the same time you did a deal with Glenn Godfrey.?

Prime Minister Said Musa
?At that time the government was carrying out a very robust program in the country, investing in the people in many other areas and so were pursuing full privatization. Now you may or may not agree with that, but if you go down the route of full privatization, you have to sell. Government has to get out of it. And that is still our objective, incidentally. We don?t want the government to own any shares in B.T.L.. That is why we sold the majority of shares to Carlisle at the time and subsequently to the I.C.C. group, to get the government out of B.T.L. in order to have if you like, the funds to invest in housing for the people, expanding education, expanding healthcare, and we?ve done a tremendous amount of that. I think that is the area where we tend to forget, well what caused the government to sell the shares. Is it because the government wanted to make a deal, a corrupt deal with Mr. Ashcroft or Mr. Prosser? No.?

Stewart Krohn
?It wasn?t a corrupt deal, it was deal that can be characterized as not the brightest deal.?

Prime Minister Said Musa
?Alright not the brightest, but as I tell you it was a way expanding our investment base to benefit the poor Belizean people, many of whom did benefit in terms of getting an improved quality of life situation.?

Stewart Krohn
?If you ever get back the golden share in B.T.L. would you give it up again??

Prime Minister Said Musa
?No.?

Prime Minster Said Musa