Lord submits his own report to P.M.

From its start, the Commission of Inquiry into the Development Finance Corporation has had a rough time, particularly when Chairman David Price died, leaving the two remaining Commissioners to co-chair the remainder of the proceedings. As odd a couple as Herbert Lord and Merlene Bailey-Martinez may have appeared, no one thought they would have wound up filing two separate official reports. But that’s exactly what has happened. This afternoon, Cabinet Secretary Bobby Leslie confirmed to News Five that on Thursday evening Lord personally delivered a full report on the financial affairs of the D.F.C. to the Prime Minister’s Office in Belmopan. As the Prime Minister was in Toledo late last week, that document was not handed over to P.M. Musa until this morning. We understand that the Lord report is ninety-three pages of text and includes the Justice’s findings and recommendations. Via telephone, Leslie also confirmed that the Prime Minister is expecting the report of Bailey-Martinez imminently. When we contacted her last Friday, she declined comment maintaining that she preferred to wait until she received a response to a letter written to the Prime Minister’s Office. But when we asked Leslie about that letter, he claimed that no such document had been delivered to Prime Minister Musa. Our attempts to contact Bailey-Martinez about the discrepancy were unsuccessful. As for when the P.M. will be making public comment on the Lord report, Leslie told us that the Prime Minister will be (quote) “reading and digesting” the document over the next couple days. It is believed that the basis of Lord’s decision to write his own report was the claim that Bailey-Martinez was dragging her feet. However, his co-chair maintains that she was just trying to do things properly. The D.F.C. Commission of Inquiry was appointed by Prime Minister Said Musa in March 2005 as part of an historic agreement negotiated between Belize’s labour movement and the Government following a series of protests and strikes that affected power, telecommunications and water supply. The first public hearings of the Commission began last August and after several bouts of legal wrangling, the last was held in March. Since then the P.U.P. administration has claimed that the delay in the delivery of the report by Bailey-Martinez is a politically motivated attempt to make the report’s release come as close as possible to the upcoming elections.