7 News Belize

Some Good Ole’ PUDP Finger Pointing
posted (November 18, 2014)
The debate went a little deeper on the history of Petrocaribe. Both parties have operated the program while in government and it is the PUP, which first signed unto it in 2005. The other thing they have in common is that - until now - none of them had taken it to the House as is required by law for all public borrowing over ten million dollars.

And so that made for a lot of that most common of political practices: finger pointing across the floor. Here's some of it:..

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"They gave that fuel and the importation of that fuel to a company headed by one Antonio "Tony" Zabaneh, a PUP who special relationship with the then Prime Minister is well known by all of this country. That company never would, never could gain the kind of traction needed, never would be able to import the volume of the fuel necessary to take advantage of Petrocaribe because at the same time Esso continue to be the principal importer, sourcing the fuel from elsewhere. So in order to privilege their crony and arrange no doubt for party and ministerial kickbacks they shafted the Belizean people. So Mr. Speaker after a while of course Petro Fuel as the Zabaneh was named folded, but not before their administration collected. The finance portion of the Petrocaribe proceeds amounted to 10.63 million US dollars. The trigger under the Finance and Audit Act is 10 million Belize dollars. Why you never bring Petrocaribe to the National Assembly if you are so concern about transparency and doing the right thing?"

Hon. Francis Fonseca, Leader of the Opposition
"So Mr. Speaker, let there be no question about the People's United Party's support for the Petrocaribe program. We started it, we made it happen and we develop it into a working program."

Rt. Hon. Said Musa, Former Prime Minister
"We are not against the Petrocaribe. We are against the way you'd be spending the money without legal authority and the waste and corruption that has been taking place. But before I go into this motion itself Mr. Speaker, the Honorable Prime Minister has made various innuendos suggestions that when Petrocaribe was being administered by the PUP as if though we misuse this money or actually accusing us of embezzling the money. As the Prime Minister knows because I am sure he checked it with Mr. Joe Waight, the Financial Secretary that he is praising today, would have told him, was deposited in the Central Bank of Belize and they know that. Accuse me of doing the same thing for 10.6 million dollars - 228 million dollars is what we are talking about today."

Hon. John Saldivar
"We have no trace of that in our accounting. Talk about abuse. There is nowhere that the Financial Secretary can send us - because we are now in charge, well we are trying to find out. We are trying to see where the money was spent and there is nowhere we can find that can tell us what they did with the 40 million. Now we hear the then Prime Minister saying that it was held in reserve. Well I don't know where that was held in reserve."

The debate on the loan motion is the longest we can recall in the last 21 years of reporting on the House; it went for six and a half hours.

There were a number of other loan motions which had to be taken through all their stages today - and so the house meeting was still going at news time.

We should note though that in a move reminiscent of Floyd "Money" Mayweather, the house meeting started 52 minutes late as the UDP basically made the opposition wait for the House to be called into session at eight minutes to 11.

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