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Hon. John Saldivar - Member - Public Accounts Committee
"Because the previous committees that were constituted between 1998 and 2008 were never given an opportunity to examine the auditors' general report. From that period we want to also examine those reports, along with examining the reports from 2008 onwards."

Jules Vasquez
"Mr. Espat says that if you all want to do that, you have to have a house special select sub committee, but the work of the committe that he chairs, is to review 2012 going forward."

Hon. John Saldivar
"He will certainly need to show me which part of the standing orders say that, and his record speaks for itself, that he simply does not understand the standing orders."

Jules Vasquez
"This thing has traction from civil society, social partners. How will you all resist that?"

Hon. John Saldivar
"Support that is based on a misinformed premise, that is based on a false premise, cannot give justification to that support, and I'm prepared to sit and discuss with any of these social partners, to show them that they have arrived at support for this, based on the wrong premise. There is nothing wrong with the public accounts' committee as is currently constituted."

Jules Vasquez
"Something must be wrong, if it hasn't met for thirty years."

Hon. John Saldivar "Obviously the People's United Party, at the time, not allow it to function. If you do your research, you will see that as soon as we got into power in 2008, we made some major changes to the law, to ensure that the auditor general presented reports to the national assembly. Those are the changes we made in 2008, which has now allowed for the committee to function, regardless if the government side doesn't cooperate."

Jules Vasquez
"But there was no functioning from 2008 up to 2013, where we are now.'

Hon. John Saldivar
"Ask the then chair"

Jules Vasquez
"Mark Espat. - so then, how do we move forward; will you all having those meetings that are discussed in the press release, with or without the chairman?"

Hon. John Saldivar
"With or without, we will vote on the matter at the next meeting. If the chairman refuses to call a meeting under the standing orders, members can call a meeting and force a meeting, he may attend or not attend. If he does not attend, the business of the committee will continue. We will have those public hearings."

Jules Vasquez
"So, but isn't the suggestion that you all review 2008 going forward; isn't that slightly preposterous that only the government members make a review of that?"

Hon. John Saldivar
"Well, it will be public, so that's why we have you there Jules; you will see how we deal with it, and you will know that we are dealing with it in a transparent manner and we are dealing with it in a manner without trying to hide anything from the Belizean people; you can be the judge of that."

Government has committed that all meetings will be held in public.