On Wednesday night - the Teachers Union held a forum on the Petrocaribe legislation that - as we showed you on Thursday - devolved into a lot of finger pointing and insult throwing. And it ended up like that because the UDP did a hard charge into the event with a group of young professionals who challenged the panel, while well-known UDP rabble rousers lobbed insults from the back of the room. It made for an entertaining, if mostly unenlightening evening, and on Friday the commentary on what went wrong, or right - went all the way to the House of Representatives:
Hon. Francis Fonseca, Leader of the Opposition
"The BNTU forum that they had at St. Mary's Hall were you had distinguished speakers, Audrey Matura Shepherd, Mose Hyde, Senator Lizarraga, the Representative for the VIP, Patrick Rogers. There to represent their views to the teachers and to the public on the Petrocaribe, very loan motion, loan act that we were going to discuss today and what did the Government do? What did this UDP Government and Party do? Send thugs and goons including the mace bearer here to that meeting to try to intimidate, intimidate those panelist, to intimidate the teachers, to intimidate those persons who are present that is absolutely disgraceful and should be condemned by all right thinking Belizeans."
Hon. Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
"The dirty, petty, rude attacks coming from Audrey Matura and from Mose Hyde - no sense of objectivity at all Mr. Speaker. if the BNTU wanted to organize a forum to properly consult with the teachers then they would have invited somebody from the Government but it was a railroad session but Mr. Speaker what they did not expect was the group of young talented people who went there and challenged them Mr. 
Speaker. Challenged them in their own forum because it was nonsense they were talking and they couldn't handle it and they started insulting up. I heard Matura insulting young Ms. Stephanie Duncan telling her well you're coming from the Prime Minister's office this is..... Rude, has no respect for young talent."
Notably, we did not see other union groups at the event.
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