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Today in the house, Opposition Leader Fonseca expressed his outrage, while the PM confessed his ignorance:..

Hon. Francis Fonseca, Leader of the Opposition
"We are building some facility out at Hunting Caye, the Coast Guard. I don't know if it's a headquarters or some other facility for the Coast Guard and he is saying he went out there personally and the contract to build this Coast Guard facility is held by Guatemalans, a Guatemalan company and every single workers there, this is Mose Hyde saying this, is a Guatemalan national. The Guatemalan company and Guatemalan workers building our Coast Guard facility. Man, there must be some national security risk in that taking place. Somebody has to be awake man, we can't all be sleeping over there in the government. Who is looking after these matters?"

Hon. John Saldivar, Minister of Nat'l Security
"That forward operating base is being gifted to us, the people and government of Belize by the United States government. They have their own bidding processes that we must respect and though we are not comfortable with the fact that a Guatemalan company is doing the construction, the question has to be whether we would look a gift horse in the mouth and give up a much needed forward operating base from which to do the very same security activities which we all know are so important to the security of our nation."

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"The question of who is building the forward operating base on Hunting Caye is not something that in the normal course would be communicated to me."

Jules Vasquez
"But it raise a flag for them to say 'bwai, I must need mention, x.y,z'"

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"I don't know, I supposed if this terrible incident haven't happen they might have thought it's not a big deal, the Americans contracted these people, so I don't know that there was any failure on the part of anyone in terms of not telling me about that. As it is now that I know, I imagine there is nothing we can do. The contract must be well in the stage on execution and I don't think we want to overreact and say to the Americans you know what stop it. But certainly going forward again I will make clear that this must not happen again on another occasion."

We should note that the Sapodilla Cayes are a prime vacation spot for wealthy Guatemalans.

And another thing the Prime Minister doesn't want to see continuing is all those US Flags on police vehicles. He explained his dislike for it:..

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"It really does irk me when I see all these police vehicles emblaze not just in one location, on at least locations on the vehicles with the US flags. We have got to start doing far more for ourselves and ensuring that we don't end up in this sort of a situation such as is happening with the forward operating base."

We'll have news on today's important house business in our second segment.