On Friday, P.M. admits defeat and would not take Telemedia by force

Dean Barrow

That was essentially the ruling. Prime Minister Dean Barrow conceded on the airwaves that the decision must be honored.  The Prime Minister gave a telephone interview to Channel Seven in which he admitted defeat, and that the best thing to do was allow them to it and he didn’t want to take the company back by force using the police.   That was his initial reaction; but the takeover of Telemedia in August 2009 has been described as the singular defining moment of the PM’s legacy so when he returned from a cocktail party in Belmopan at around ten o’clock Friday night, there was a reversal of his position. He informed the government appointed board chair, Net Vasquez, that he would in fact re-assert control over the company. Here is the Prime Minister’s first statement on Friday.

Dean Barrow

“No I would have expected that from Ashcroft and I had to consider beforehand in the eventuality that we did lose how I will treat with that. Now the judgment was for immediate effect but the order has not yet been shared and so I suppose technically we could have said ‘no we stop you from taking over back until you share the order’ but I didn’t think that we should play it that way. I thought that in order to signal to the population at large our absolute respect for the decision of the court that we should allow them to as it were move on that decision immediately. I didn’t see that there was anything useful to be gained from keeping them at bay. That might have turned ugly, that might have turned nasty, we might have had to use the police and I didn’t think that we would gain anything by that.”

Click here to view the full text of GOB’s release on the ruling and its decision to retain control of Telemedia.