Last night, we told you that Patrick Menzies and the leadership of the Spanish arm of the Evangelical Churches, the "Alliance of Ministers and Leaders," would be making a second demonstration in Belmopan today to follow up on Friday's protest outside the House meeting.
That's the protest which got out of hand when the Belize City based agitators hijacked the church protest and broke the police barrier to rush the Assembly building - the cops had to fire a shot to stop them from storming into the House.
Well as we told you last night, the police did not want to grant them any permits to protest today, and so they instead staged a church service on the National Assembly Steps. It didn't have the numbers from Friday; the crowd shrank from 16 hundred persons to only one hundred and sixty.
Today, we were in Belmopan to speak with their leader, Patrick Menzies, who told us that they Cabinet must concede to the 10 demands they made public yesterday:
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"When we last spoke with you, you said that you were having difficulties with the police to get a permit to protest. Did you managed to overturn that and is this today a service or a protest?"
Patrick Menzies, President - Spanish Church's Alliance of Ministers and Leaders
"No, I did not managed to overturn that, because the stuff you had to go through would have been a rigmarole and I decided to just forget it and so instead we are having it as a ministry type thing, not as a protest. We are still doing the exact same thing, we are still saying the same thing. The difference is that we are not having any leaders that are not from church, that are basically going to be there. For example, the translator Jose Espat is no longer a part of the BPP, so he is not here as a politician. His mom is a part of the church and we have other pastors who are speaking. At 10:30 the plan is to take probably a single file march towards the US Embassy, come around and then end up by the administration building. We will be giving notice to cabinet and we expect them to deal with and we have some deadlines...."
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"Comparing the mobilization from Friday to today, it appears not only some 4-5% of what was out here on a Friday - something between 1400-1600 persons. Having a great list of demands like this to have teeth to that you need numbers."
Patrick Menzies
"Yeah, that sounds good. The difference is this, this is the exact same demands from Friday. What I really wanted today was ministers and deacons. So if the PM wants to count people, court Friday. Because this is the demands from Friday."
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"What sort of consequences will there be? Are you able to say should they completely disregard these 7-10 demands that the Alliance is making?"
Patrick Menzies
"There will be consequences. What are those consequences I refuse - all I will say is 1) we don't believe in harming anyone and 2) we don't believe in destruction of property. We don't believe in hurting anyone, not even LGBT or government officials or anyone. We refuse to support hurting anyone and we don't believe in destruction of property. Everything else is on the table."
As you saw in our footage, the 160 persons marched in front of the Sir Edney Cain building where Cabinet meets every Tuesday. They were looking to get the attention of the Cabinet, and as you saw, Menzies went to deliver his 10 demands to the meeting. He handed it over the security who had promised to deliver it - presumably, to the Cabinet Secretary. We understand that those demands most likely did not make it to the Prime Minister or his ministers.
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