PM Briceño “has got to clarify all of this for the media”
PM Briceño
Since issuing the release on Tuesday afternoon, Prime Minister John Briceño is yet to field questions on Senator Courtenay’s abrupt resignation. As such, a lot of what is currently taking place between PM Briceño and senior government ministers at the Sir Edney Cain Building remains speculative. A call is being made for the sitting head of government to come forward and openly shed light on the latest developments in Cabinet.
Dean Barrow
Dean Barrow, Former Prime Minister
“The prime minister has got to clarify all of this for the media, for the public. There are constitutional issues involved, as well as practical issues and so far we are all left to speculate, to pass our opinions, but this thing is a kind of moving target or, at the very least, the most opaque, the most clouded of equations that nobody can properly figure out because it doesn’t make sense. What we are left with, as of now, is entirely and completely unsatisfactory and I hope that the media and the public will continue to press this issue until we get some satisfactory answers, although I suspect that no answer will prove satisfactory in the circumstances.”
Isani Cayetano
“Mr. Barrow, what are your thoughts on perhaps the technicality of the standing orders for the upper house where he remains as Leader of Government Business, but he’s not a minister of government? How does that work?”
Dean Barrow
“I’ve seen that. I don’t, I haven’t looked at it. I promised myself that I would go look at the standing orders because I gather that that’s certainly the position that the UDP takes, that the chairman of the UDP takes. I believe Courtenay himself is suggesting that, well there’s a competition between two different standing orders. I have not yet looked at it, so I have to refrain from passing any opinion on that one. But I have looked at the constitution. I have looked generally at the question of Cabinet status and what it means and so I am able to speak with conviction indeed, I hope, authority when I say that this business of retaining Cabinet privileges makes no sense, cannot work practically and constitutionally in the circumstances and especially when you add to that the fact that he’s supposed to continue to be in charge politically of Belize’s processes at the ICJ.”
