Earlier we reported on the budget for the new financial year and the additional taxes that will be imposed. But the House meeting would not be over without the usual dose of mudslinging. And as it has in the past, the arrows of Prime Minister Dean Barrow were slung again at his predecessor, Said Musa. […]
While the Barrow Administration presented its third annual budget before the National Assembly, Belizeans continue to prepare for inevitable tax increases in what will be an overall difficult financial year ahead. According to the Leader of the Opposition, John Briceño, the VAT man is back. In speaking with News Five, Briceño gave his rapid response […]
And we’ve heard about the hog head for various cultural practices – the hog head dance, the baked hog head and there’s the pig snout which is taken from the hog face and soaked in brine to season that pot of beans. Well it seems that someone thought Minister of State in the Ministry of […]
In the margins of today’s House meeting, we caught up with Juan Coy, the Minister of State, in the Ministry of Human Development and Social Transformation. Coy was in the news recently for reports that he ejected Bartolo Teul, one of his ardent campaigners, from a meeting at Big Falls in Toledo. Teul claimed that […]
Minister Juan Coy was suspended as a Minister of state for six months when he was accused of ordering the B.D.F. to allow contraband beer from Guatemala into Belize. That was last year; he has since been re-instated, but his troubles are far from over. Last Sunday a verbal confrontation between Coy and a campaign […]
There is a sixty million dollar hole in the 2010-2011 budget and the government is expected to announce on Monday how it will raise the cash to balance the shortfall. And there is reason to believe that the prime minister will be forced to impose additional taxes to cover debt financing and recurrent expenditures. At […]
As part of the Treasury Amendment, the government is increasing the duration of treasury notes from five to ten years. Espat says that the U.D.P. criticized the PUP for extending the life of the foreign commercial debt and now the U.D.P. government is guilty of doing the same thing. He thinks that the long term […]
The next bill that is expected to be passed by the U.D.P.’s majority in the House is the Central Bank of Belize Amendment Act. The Barrow administration hopes that it will bring down interest rates but the PUP’s deputy leader says that it is only an optical illusion that won’t have any impact on lowering […]
In news from Belmopan, Cabinet met in special session this past Thursday since the regular Tuesday session was postponed due to the attendance of Prime Minister Dean Barrow at the Unity and CARICOM Mexico Summits held in Playa del Carmen. Cabinet was putting the final touches to the new budget for the 2010 – 2011 […]
The Senate met for part of the day in Belmopan to consider the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution that went through its second and third reading in the House on Friday. The most controversial part that dealt with persons holding dual nationality to sit in the House or Senate was stripped from the bill. But […]
As we reported, the Education and Training Bill was passed by the Senate today. The man who steered the controversial Bill in the House last Friday, was the Minister of Education Patrick Faber. Faber was both emotional and controversial as he took on one of his predecessors as well as a union leader during his […]
But there is one constituency the Minister will need given his political ambitions. That’s the unions who are vex, in fact downright angry, with him. And that bad blood just got hotter today when Faber reiterated that at least sixty percent of the teachers are not trained and that some were ignorant. And like his […]
The Senate meets in Belmopan this Tuesday and it is expected to ratify the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution that was passed by the House of Representatives last Friday. Of the three changes to the amendment package, government proceeded with the two less contentious. Firstly, it passed the Caribbean Court of Justice as the final […]
The amount of money paid to the law firm of the Prime Minister’s ex-wife was also at the center of a feisty debate in the House. The Opposition has consistently raised questions about the amount of money Lois Young’s law firm has been collecting since the change of government. The issue was brought up in […]
Last year the government introduced the Belize Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Bill and held consultations nationwide. The Bill came under fire from the public which has caused the government to abandon one of the proposed changes, the election of persons to government with dual citizenship. In the House today, the Bill went through its third reading […]
In other developments at City hall, there is a new deputy mayor for the City and guess who… it’s Philip Willoughby. Willoughby beat Leila Peyrefitte who was aspiring to move up. Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers called for voting on the matter since the term of Dion Leslie, the outgoing Deputy Mayor, comes to an end […]
While the council attempts to get back all the funds that were stolen, city Hall is still faced with a cash flow problem. The councils mounting debt with the companies that collect garbage have been the subject of public scrutiny and protests. Currently an outstanding debt of over a million dollars, owed to Belize Maintenance […]
It made big news earlier this week when three of its employees were detained pending investigations into more missing monies. The news plunged City Hall deeper into scandal after the recent charges against Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers and three members of her finance team last October. But the forty-eight hours that the cops were entitled […]
Many issues were raised by the Prime Minister at his press conference on Wednesday, including the admission that things will get worst in the next fiscal year. That was bad news but another issue that stuck out like a sore thumb, was his unapologetic defense of his ex- wife, Lois Young, as the government’s lawyer […]
No Dual Citizens in the House. That’s the news coming out of the PM’s conference earlier today when he revealed that the Seventh Amendment to the constitution has been struck down. Since the Prime Minister brought the bill to the House of Representatives in June of 2009, the general population spoke out vehemently against it […]
Lois Young, the Prime Minister’s first wife, is the attorney of choice for the Barrow administration. She has been contracted as lead attorney in many of the government’s high profile cases. It is estimated that she collected well over one point two million dollars from the Ministry of Finance during the period from March fourteenth […]
In the next few days it will be two years since the U.D.P. government took office and it is becoming patently clear that Prime Minister Dean Barrow is heading to a Cabinet reshuffle. Today’s issue of the government newspaper, quoted the Prime Minister as saying that “as it relates to the Minister of National Security, […]
The result of an audit at City Hall was released some months ago, but few have seen a complete copy. That is because it contains highly damaging information about city hall’s finances. We have already reported on tradeoffs and write offs on trade licenses and last night, we touched on the excessive amount of monies […]
The special audit inspection into the affairs of the Belize City Council for the period of April 2003 to December 2008 looks specifically at the council’s maintenance of its accounting records and documents. There are many questionable transactions revealed in the report that is making its rounds in the media. A review of the fuel […]
Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers is yet to have her day in court for criminal charges for twenty two counts of uttering a false and two counts of violating City Council Regulations. That was last October, but her party is moving full steam ahead to take disciplinary action against her. Moya Flowers has reportedly been served […]
