Depending on International Funding, while Spending on Unnecessary Projects

Cordel Hyde

The P.U.P.’s Cordel Hyde was also critical of the financing of the education campaign. He says the government has gone hat in hand to the international community, while it spent on unnecessary projects that go nowhere. That money, he argued, could have instead been spent on an independent campaign.  According to Hyde, by depending on the international community for funding, the government has sold out the sovereignty of Belize.

Cordel Hyde, Deputy Party Leader, P.U.P.

“We are at this point where it seems almost like we have to take instructions from the international community. But that happens when you got hat in hand to the international community begging for money all the time.  You know we have literally gone to the international community to beg for money for our education campaign on the most critical, the most existential question of our lifetime. The government of Belize has a one point two billion dollar annual budget. It will probably be a little bit more after today, and the government could not find eight million dollars or five million dollars or whatever amount of million dollars is required to have an education campaign that will be fair that will be balanced, where the pros and cons will be delivered—full of facts, full of history, full of fear mongering. We can’t have that because we are around the world begging for money to provide this education campaign to our people. If you take these people money then these people will give instructions to you. And that is the problem that we have. We should have never taken any money from the U.K. or the U.S. to provide an education campaign for the people. That is the responsibility of the government of Belize for and on behalf of the people of Belize. We have a situation where we spend four million dollars annually on new vehicle. We spend four million dollars on that tragedy that’s Lake I Boulevard; eight million dollars pan wah mile a road ina Faber’s Road. We spend thirty-five million dollars ina road in the middle of nowhere to the airport; thirty-five million dollars pan di civic centre. We wah spend one hundred and ninety million dollars pan the Caracol Road ina Mountain Pine Ridge ina di middle of nowhere, where nobody lives. But we can’t find eight million dollars fi make sure that our education campaign is free from fear mongering and full of the facts and history.”