Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister's budget presentation took about 34 minutes to deliver - which is his new personal best for brevity. So then why was the Leader of the Opposition's response one hour and twenty nine minutes long? Well, it seems that for every good word the Prime Minister had to say, the Opposition Leader had ten bad ones. Here are some of the very condemnatory words Barrow had for the Prime Minister, his budget, the government, and the horses they came in on.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
"One would have expected that in a last gasp effort, the Prime Minister would have in his speech two weeks ago flung caution to the winds, laid on the old razzle dazzle and promise the electorate the sun, the moon, and the stars. But instead of a death throw's bravura performance, we heard two weeks ago a budget speech that was flat, insipid, and lifeless.
Was the perfunctoriness of the speech Madam Speaker, the half heartedness of even the few sweeteners offered, perhaps a concession to the hopelessness of the government's case? A realization that the Prime Minister and this administration are so hated, disgusted, and reviled that nothing on God's green earth can save them?
Nothing for the warring street gangs that sublimate their frustration in the nihilistic violence that we have been seeing? Nothing for the workers? Nothing for the unemployed? Nothing for the small farmers? Nothing for the small entrepreneurs? Nothing for the students, the housewives, and the school children?
The inflation rate has risen steeply Madam Speaker. Steeply last year and in fact when you go back and do a comparison for the statistical tables over the last five years, it is clear that inflation has risen steeply every single year. It is an acknowledgement by the statistics of the misery and the living hell that is the everyday existence of thousands of our Belizean citizens. They simply can't cope with the skyrocketing increase in the cost of living. 4.5% over the last year.
It is proof positive of the suffering and the penury into which the masses of the people have been driven by this government.
Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister's treatment of the public debt, it was, as with all the millions realized from the sale of national assets, instead this huge contraction of burdensome unmanageable debt was principally for the self aggrandizement of Ministers and their families and their friends. The enrichment of the cronies such as the Novelos and Glen Godfrey and Papi Pena and Bill Lindo and Arturo Lizarraga and Haisam Diab.
The debt monies were spent on Intelco and Galleria Maya and San Lorenzo and Los Lagos and Mahogany Heights. The debt monies were spent as compensation for properties owned by Ministers and their drivers and their wives and their uncles and acquired by this government for millions more than they were worth. Debt monies were spent on houses that were no good that eventually had to be fire sold but from which the kickbacks were plentiful and the self-awarded contracts were obscene.
The debt monies were spent on the roads that led to nowhere, on white elephant project after white elephant project. On a phantom national transportation system. the debt monies were siphoned off to Hibernia Bank and the International Bank of Miami and to Montevideo and Panama and Cayman and Canada. That is where the two billion dollars that Belizeans will now spend an entire generation to repair, until the year 2029. That is where the two billion dollars went.
The proper word to employ with respect to this whole debt crisis is shame, shame, shame. Three times but one word. The Prime Minister concluded his speech by saying, and I quote, Belize is not a sorry country. Belize is not a sorry country, we are not a sorry people. True, but we do have a sorry government.
It is at bottom Madam Speaker, a crisis of governance and it has been brought on not by hurricanes or acts of God or circumstances beyond our control, no. It is a crisis that is entirely manmade as we as a people have been plunged in the slough of despond by the wheeling and dealings and stealing of those that came to power on such tremendous promise in 1998.
Is it any wonder Madam Speaker that the criminals in the corridors of power in Belmopan can do nothing to stop the criminals in the streets of our cities and towns and villages? That increasing crime has walked hand in hand with increasing poverty? That we are utterly impotent in the face of a complete lack of citizen security, the rule of the gun and the broad daylight murders that are a staple of the evening news.
All that Madam Speaker is the legacy of this PUP government of this Prime Minister.
He has lost all legitimacy, all semblance of support or sympathy and the only thing he can do now is go and go quickly. For the sake of our country, for the sake of your own party Prime Minister, where even your own Ministers know and say privately that you are a dead man walking. Just go.
Mr. Prime Minister do what you said all those ages ago, set Belize free. Let the fresh southeasterly of the new enlightenment begin now to purify the land. Let it blow long and hard and uninterrupted so that eventually these worst of times, this rotting smell, will be nothing but the memory of a nightmare that disappears in thee face of the bright clear warming light of a brand new day."
