And while that conversation can't happen quickly enough for the stevedores - what the public wants to know is - what are the closing costs to complete the almost 200 million Belize dollar transaction.
Yesterday, the press asked PM what those costs were. He said that he didn't have the figure at this time, but stressed on the discounts GOB negotiators were able to realize:
Reporter:
"What are our legal costs for the buy back? Because Ashcroft says $14 million."
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I don't know yet."
Reporter:
"How will you not know that?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"How will I know it at this time? Now we have to get the bills to be able to pay for that but what we did with Michael Ashcroft, what we did, we took everything as a lump sum to be able to have- we couldn't take just, the port, but take these also these arbitrary cases that we lost, the Waterloo case, under the UK-Belize treaty where they're demanding $5 million plus cost, we put everything together and by doing all of that together, we managed to reduce that cost to about 30 cents on the dollar, I think it's a major accomplishment by the government and we hope that all of these endless fights can end. Just the other day we had to pay about a million dollars just to be able to keep up with all of the filings that Mr Ashcroft was doing against us."
In his remarks to the house the PM mentioned the names of five law firms as having worked on the settlement - 3 of them international. The lead local lawyer was former Attorney General Magali Marin of Marin Young and Co. LLP.
