Opposition Wants Belizeans to Petition for Senate Inquiry

Valerie Woods

The P.U.P. has also organized a petition to have Belizeans sign on or to ask and encourage—either individually or organizations that they belong to—to write their area reps or directly to members of Government to have a senate select inquiry, which is the mechanism under the constitution to investigate the immigration scandal.

Valerie Woods, P.U.P. Senator

“Specifically required under the constitution that worked for the then Opposition back in 2004 and for back then, Senator Hulse when he was the business sector rep., for it to be utilized again. Why are we asking for that? Because it did work; there were changes made both to social security board and to DFC. Today, you have not heard of scandals under S.S.B. and DFC…so it did work in that regard; it also worked because it did call a government into question as it should have done. We are asking for no less. What is happening here is using fancy, fanciful language and legal arguments to bamboozle the Belizean public to believe that their way is the fair way when it is not. Six government ministers being the majority can never and will never as it could never have done when they were in Opposition fairly investigate a scandal of this size. And yes, of course if they would agree to an international independent body I think all of us would welcome that, but I do believe we all know that’s not going to happen either. So we are calling for as many Belizeans, regardless of which party you support, regardless of which position you took back in the last election, the point is on this matter, on our nationality, it is about the country first. We are looking very negatively worldwide and it is only us who can put some pressure as a people to use the mechanism that worked in the past to investigate.”