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No doubt, the Lands Department at the center of his ministry has been a political war chest, probably since independence…and now that Hulse has put the brakes on long established practices, he's become persona non grata within his own party. Reports last week were that the 11 wanted him gone. Now that has not been officially confirmed but Hulse did feel the need to defend himself today. We asked him about it after Cabinet:..

Jules Vasquez
"You have come under attack, that those who have their misgivings about the current direction of the government feel that you are at the center of the problem - your own colleagues in the cabinet are targeting you. How do you respond to that?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"Jules, thanks for the question. Actually, yes, I quite frankly heard it on LOVE FM much to my consolation a bit that in fact there was this move to unseat me and so my first reaction is lets go see the Prime Minister to see where I stand. And of course he is hundred percent fully in support of my position with no intention to make any change. But while we don't give secrets out of cabinet, I will say that today I undertook to raise the matter, just for my own peace of mind and that of my department. Because there is a lot rumors running around. In the cabinet today I raise the matter to get clearance from my cabinet colleagues and to aman, absolutely to aman. Absolutely nobody objected - nobody objected and the Prime Minister reiterated that for the foreseeable future he said as long as we are there the status quo remains where I am concern. I continue to work with colleagues, I continue to work with the general public. I am happy to say that since the time I was appointed, since January when I began to deal with instruments, to date I have issued 1,414 instruments. That is a combination of leases, transfers, certificates - all sorts of things and in some of those cases you find 5-6 times. So if you do the math you would say that I have signed over five thousand times. And we continue to do this, but there are some criteria that I have established that will never change and that is that Belizeans who get parcels of land, it must be done with dignity and integrity. We are not going to countenance fraud in the ministry. I am going to make sure that when Renee Trujillo applies, the person who gets that piece of land is her or Jules Vasquez, it's him and not somebody using somebody's name. I am totally against people making a real estate deal out of social rate lands. You get a piece of land on a caye for $1,000, you flip it for $50,000, you come back again - those kinds of things."

Jules Vasquez
"Now sir, we know that there is very regrettably a widespread practice where people's names, identities, social security numbers are used without their knowledge and they are then named as applicants for land and this person doesn't know anything and then eventually if the system is loose, someone can go in there and facilitate the whole transaction - make that person unknowingly convey the land to a friend of a friend and the whole thing goes over easy like that. Have you encountered this practice?"

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"Oh there is a lot of them and the public may be keen to know that this minister himself has actually driven to the homes of some of those people to look for them, to ask them if they applied and I have summoned some to my office and said 'you applied for this, is this your signature' - I have done all of that already. So that in itself has put a warning to those out there that I as the other party to the transaction am not prepared to signed a transaction if I am not fully satisfied that it is the original person who applied and applied on his own free will."

Jules Vasquez
"Might things not be coming to a head now and we must speak plainly, because there is a lot in the pipeline that got stuck when things changed and in order to free them up, you have to go."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"But I am not going anywhere."

Jules Vasquez
"However, would you agree that a part of the pressure to have you removed is because business as usual and business as necessary for certain types of people has come to an end."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"Well Jules, I can't say I agree. I have put that frankly to colleagues that my position in this ministry is to do it with dignity, honesty, integrity and to proceed as impeccably as we can and as I said no person and the Prime Minister afforded everybody a comment - no person to aman objected."

Jules Vasquez
"However, one who has to mount a stout defense their actions in a public office is one who is under attack. Would you accept that at some level, maybe a subsonic level - maybe a level you don't hear, you're under attack."

Hon. Godwin Hulse, Minister of Natural Resources
"That may be so Jules. But as you know how I operate. I operate from a position of facts and a position of being straight. I don't pretend, I don't play the fool. So as far as I am concern, all those undercurrents may be running and people may have their feelings, just simply say it to my face or come up to me and say this is the problem and I dare anybody to do that."

And our interview got even juicer after that when we probed in even more depth the dubious and fraudulent practices that persisted in the ministry before Hulse got there. Tune in for that portion of the interview tomorrow night.