Email

Print

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"I only saw a clip on channel seven because I confess to Jules the other day that all I watch is channel seven. This is a major plug for Jules, by the way. And I saw I saw that Peyrefitte was lamenting that, in fact, the number should have been 94? Now, when I listen to Peyrefitte and Shyne, I get the feeling like they're the grim reapers of governance and politics. I've never seen two people, well, three more pray out the lives of Belizean people than these people. They're praying out the lives of Belizean people. The numbers show that we had 89 homicides, but they're getting up there to complain that it should be 94. We want more people dead in our country, like when they were in power, 145. That's what they should be talking about. Same characters lining up who had no plans and I didn't see Jules air any plans or solutions to crime, but these are the same characters who could not provide solutions for crime. Criticizing a difference of five, I think, numbers is just ridiculous."

Reporter:
"They're saying that they were perhaps deliberately classified."

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"For what reason? For what reason? What? It's 94, 89. It's not 89 or 145. What is cooking? If the DPP says that this is a case of manslaughter, you still want us to put it as a homicide? Or if the forensics department has done a postmortem and says it doesn't seem to be foul play, you still want us to put murder? I mean, that's the level we're going up now because people just can't be satisfied that numbers are lower than their time."

Jules Vasquez:
"Yeah, but so, you know, 89 to 94, it's not a huge material difference. But I don't want to sound like somebody's mother and say, but it's the principle of the thing. There should be truth and transparency in public life. It is deliberately obfuscatory of the Commissioner of police and of the senior command that as we were coming down to the end of the year, they were deliberately trying to keep the numbers down, because we know that our index of performance through which the commissioner grades himself and his department, what concerns them is not the discrepancy in numbers. It is the motive."

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"There, I mean, I don't think there's anybody that pays attention to these numbers more than you. You take a daily count and or by our account of these numbers. So we have a fairly accurate number. It's 91 according to you. So would you be happy if I say it's 91? I don't know if that, because there's not, like I said, that difference of 89 to 145 where your allegations that they're cooking the books? It doesn't resemble close to what the United Democratic Party had this country in. Not even close. So I don't know if that's going to make you feel better. But I'm saying these are the official numbers. If you want us to cook the numbers up in your favor, we can do that if that makes you happy."

Of note, in the press conference, the number Peyrefitte used was 97.