Minister Musa Responds to Peyrefitte

Kareem Musa

On Tuesday, the United Democratic Party called for the heads of Minister of Home Affairs Kareem Musa and his C.E.O. Kevin Arthur, citing that the crime rate is up. Former Police Minister and U.D.P. Chairman, Michael Peyrefitte said that Musa and Arthurs have failed to get the crime situation under control. Not one to take that lying down, today Minister Musa gave a report on the murder stats for 2021 up to November, which is currently at ninety murders so far, with about a month and half to go till the end of the year. But he also brought out the statistics from previous years under the last administration.

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs

“It sounded like a scratch record – let’s start there. Former Minister Peyrefitte – I see they have assigned him now to do the speaking when it comes to crime in Belize. Previously they had gone with Minister Aragon, but as I had chronicled in the last interview, Mister Aragon had only presided over the most murderous year in Belize’s history when he was assigned to Belize City in charge of Eastern Division and that was one hundred and forty-seven murders. But listening to Mister Peyrefitte yesterday, I am glad he has found a voice. Obviously he had been experiencing some sort of withdrawals from the media; he is back now in front of the cameras grandstanding. But I want to say this Duane, the numbers don’t lie. I have in front of me and I will share this with all the members of the press – the murder rate from 2014 up to 2021 and this goes up to November first 2014, ninety-one murders – and by the way we are not including 2012 which was the most murderous year under the U.D.P. term – 2014, ninety-one murders; 2015, one hundred and two murders; 2016, one hundred and eight murders; 2017, one hundred and four murders; 2018, one hundred and sixteen murders; 2019, ninety-seven murders; and then 2020, which is an anomaly because we had the lockdown for over a month where nobody could move and we also had a state of emergency for ninety days, three months. So you take out four months from 2020 and that explains why 2020 the murders were less than this year. So Mister Peyrefitte needs to check his records from 2012 to 2021 and realise that this year is actually less than all of his government’s years in office, except for the anomaly 2020. And so I would like to call for his resignation, but unfortunately for him, he can’t even win a seat or wah convention ina ih own party.”