Deputy Prime Minister Patrick Faber joins his UDP colleagues in rejecting the CCJ judgment. Today at another event Faber gave his view on this matter and at the same time, called out Former Prime Minister Said Musa for being at the root of this $90 million dollar problem.
Hon. Patrick Faber, Deputy Prime Minister
"It is terribly disappointing, it continues to have us make the point that the horrors and the evils of last PUP administration continue to haunt us. Of course our position is that this is not something we should be paying at all, there are no benefits to the Belizean people and so it is an absolute nightmare for us that this is the outcome coming from the CCJ. We will now have to discuss what our position will be as a government. We did have preliminary discussions in cabinet on Tuesday but we did not know what the official outcome would have been so it is left to be seen what those discussion will yield. But if you want my personal view right off I don't think this a burden that the Belizean tax payers should be carrying at all and it is going to deprive us of monies that we could be doing a whole lot more things with."
Courtney Weatherburne, reporter
"Now Mr. Musa's position is that all this could have been settled but the government wanted to continue pushing and fighting, they wouldn't have paid this much money if Mr. Barrow would have settled earlier in another…right, so what is your response to that?"
Hon. Patrick Faber
"Well again I cry shame on him, he wanted us to pay for something that the Belizean people have not benefitted from, they were not benefitting from it then and they are not benefitting from it now in fact he is saying that the Venezuelan money and the Taiwanese grants would have been used to cover that and we would not have any debt, that is absolutely ridiculous because those monies as we all know now, well at least the Venezuelan portion, was returned and used on the Belizean people."
"In fact I support the move made by the Prime Minister to not pay especially when you had the courts on our side, certainly the Supreme Court and the Appeals Court made the point that we were on the right footing, why would we back down and pay, so I condemn the former Prime Minister absolutely for those statements, he should be ashamed, I am very much interested in finding out what he will do because you know that this matter has to go to House of Representatives for us to appropriate monies to pay this, this is not a small amount of money and I am very interested to hear what his comments will be."
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