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Our team is just back from Belmopan with video of the Senate meeting.  The meeting lasted four hours and it's too late to edit it all together, but suffice to say that the Motion to set up a special select committee to investigate the Immigration Department did not pass.  Earlier we told you that there was some doubt as to whether the motion was defeated or if it ended in a tie – which still would not have granted its passage.  But, during the course of the news, the clerk of the National Assembly confirmed that it was defeated by the judgment of the president who ruled that the no's have it – meaning 6 government members plus the President's casting vote.  But when the voting was done, before he could rule PUP Senator Lisa Shoman advised him that the constitution bars him from voting on such a motion.  Here's how that exchange went and her comments after the meeting finished at 6:00 pm:

Jules Vasquez
"Senator, the meeting ended on an inconclusive note, it appears because -"

Lisa Shoman, P.U.P. Senator
"No, six senators voted in favor - the three social partner senators and the three senators from the opposition - and all six senators for the government voted against. In this matter, the constitution is clear: the president does not have a casting vote. When it comes to any matter relating to section sixty-one (A) (D), which is exactly what we were dealing with today."

Jules Vasquez
"But then the president didn't recognize that although you put that him, so it will be recorded that your motion was defeated; not that it was deadlocked."

Lisa Shoman
"It had better be recorded that it was deadlocked because if the Hansard reflects that there are seven votes, I am prepared to go to court to clear the Hansard because the president does not have a vote when it comes to matters dealing with section sixty-one (A) (D) of the constitution. Sixty-one (A) (D) is precisely the section here to investigation wrongdoing and to investigate those allegations. That touches and concerns specifically the senate's power to investigate wrongdoing and corruption. And when it comes to that, the president who is not a senator and this one isn't does not have a vote. And the constitution trumps whatever it is that anybody things they are going to find in the standing orders or otherwise. It is the supreme law of the land."

Jules Vasquez
"But still your motion, though valiant, did not succeed."

Lisa Shoman
"Unfortunately Jules that is so. And I will tell you, I am massively disappointed that the Minister of Immigration should have voted no in this after all his brave words about his not fearing the light and that anybody could come. Clearly anybody could come except the senate, except his own colleagues with whom he sits every senate meeting. Those are the people he doesn't want investigating; those are the people he doesn't want to hold a public inquiry and the public has every right to ask the minister of immigration why did he vote no. he was invited by senator Montejo to in fact recuse himself because it is his ministry that we are dealing with. And you saw that he took the privilege of being a minister to make a public statement, to make a public statement today which nobody could answer, which nobody could respond to, to give all kinds of information for the first time to the media, to the Belizean public that nobody had heard before. All this narrative, all this thing about not being afraid, all the red-herring of the auditor general and the auditor general's powers, he still could not answer the plain fact that the senate is not the cart of the auditor general's horse. And that is a fact."

So, we wait and see what challenge Shoman will mount as the clerk has confirmed that the President's decision of the vote went 7 – 6 in favour of the no's – meaning the government side.  The position as it was explained to us is that the President of the Senate – while he does not have a casting vote, does have an original vote as a Senator.

Tomorrow we'll have a full package of highlights from the meeting including the fully fleshed out arguments of the PUP Senators, the Social partner Senators and the Government side.