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But, today, he refused to concede that his response has been lacking:

Courtney Menzies:
"Will you concede that the national response to the hijacking of the Tropic Air flight was delayed, slowed, didn't seem very urgent? It's a month later and you're just addressing the issue."

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"How could you even say that? These are the times you want to get upset and you want to behave like a Dean Barrow but I'm not a Dean Barrow."

Jules Vasquez:
"Or a Shyne Barrow."

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Or a Shyne Barrow. But I'm not that kind of person. Let me give you a sequence of events. When that happened that Thursday, as I mentioned earlier, I was in the US in the hospital with my wife. If I was not in a hospital, I would have been on a plane on the Friday to come here. When the farmers were agitating I think last year, I was going to go and meet the Pope. My bags were on the plane and I said you know what, I'm coming to Belize because this is an issue that we need to address. It's because of that I was not here but I immediately asked that we have a National Security Council meeting so there was an emergency House Meeting that very same afternoon and things started to work immediately. Not because I don't talk to you, nothing happened. we are not a government of press conferences, we are a government of getting the work done. The following week, we had a full briefing from the National Security Council where we got the videos, we got the talking and everything and we had already started to put some plan in action. After that, we met Cabinet, we briefed the Cabinet, when we finished briefing the Cabinet, the following day then we met with all the players in the industry all the different operators and we spoke about what we're doing and some of the other things that we have done. We presented to them some of the steps we want to take and asked them to respond to us. They should have responded last week so we could have had something that could really address the issues of aviation safety. But what is important to point out is that, why do people like to be in Belize? Because we feel free, you feel easy to move around, you feel generally safe, so one minister pointed out quiet well to make the point that let's not go from one extreme to the next extreme whereby you feel constricted with your movements so let's find a common ground where we could still feel that sense of freeness but to still give you that comfort of safety and that's what we've been doing."