Three weeks ago, Mayor Zenaida Moya declared the convention campaign season open by tearing into her own party members, calling some of her fellow councillors lazy and characterizing Boots Martinez as placing special interest before the public good. After that, Party Leader Dean Barrow had to call a truce meeting. He told both sides that they had to keep it civil, and keep it clean, and especially that they should not engage in negative campaigning in the media against their fellow UDPs.
It was such a serious issue, that the city councillors had to sign an oath of allegiance to the party, affirming their agreement. And one man stood out at that meeting. Multiple reports tell us that Councillor Mark King cried, that’s right, “living eye water” came as he demanded that the mayor respect her councillors. And while he was no doubt hurt, after seeing what we saw today, we would want to think those were tears of passion, not pain. And that passion was bleeding out this morning, when King called the media for an interview. The terms were austere; he told us that the interview may end his political career. Now, usually when politicians say that kind of thing, they’re just trying to get on the news. But, Mark King wasn’t kidding!
After you see what you’re about to see, you’ll understand why Mark King is in major political trouble tonight. He played the role of a political suicide bomber, and his jihad is against his own mayor, Zenaida Moya, who he says is an infidel against the common good. Not much more we can say, but he says plenty.
Mark King, Belize City Councillor
“I want Mayor Moya to resign immediately, before the next election, and I want Mayor Moya to apologize to the Belizean citizens. I think that with the evidence the party has of what Mayor Moya has done with tax players money, I think she should be expelled from party politics in the UDP immediately.
I have decided to come out publicly because several things have been heard from the Mayor’s mouth herself in interviews with you and on talk shows and so forth. I believe that heading into re-election people must know the truth. Belizeans must know exactly where to put their votes and Belizeans have always been the type of people that ask for the truth in politics and have never in some extent gotten it. Today they will get the raw uncut truth about what really happens in City Hall and why things really went wrong.
We have always had a hard time, an extremely hard time with Mayor Moya acknowledging our decisions. She agrees with us in front of our face, we have a quorum decision, it is minuted, and after that she goes back to the council and reverses the board’s decision. The board is set there for a significant reason under the City Council Act so that ten people including the Mayor, which makes 11, make a decision in the interest of the Belizean people and that is the reason why nine councillors have decided that because Mayor Moya wants to
make her own decisions then it is not in the interest of the Belizean people.
There was a security guard from the City Council working at the Mayor’s house. The Council met over that situation and the council decided that the security guard is not at the Mayor’s residence where she lives and that that security guard is being paid for, some $6,000, by the city of Belize. When we were looking at cost cutting measures, we decided that that would have been one of the elements we would need to cut because it was seen as excessive and it was seen as something that the council did not approve the security for the Mayor’s house and this is the house that she does not live. This is a construction site, so to speak, and the residents of Belize, taxpayers’ money was paying $6,000 a month and that does not include the over time. So that is the reason why the council at that time made the decision that a guard was not needed, a security guard was not needed, and monies were not needed to be taken from the City Council fund to pay for that.
On the second issue of the sand truck company that it is alleged that the Mayor’s brothers have. I cannot speak of how they got their trucks or their company but what I can tell the Belizean people is that we have records of $270,000 of the Belize City Council funds, taxpayer’s money again, that went to that sand truck company, and these are records that are in the Belize City Council. We approached the Mayor and she said to us in a caucus that her brothers have to eat. We said, Mayor Moya this is taxpayer’s money, we did not approve it, and we want it to stop.
On the other issue of not publishing the financials of the Council. In our manifesto 2006 to 2009 we pledged within those twelve pledges that we made to publish the financials of the councils so that the residents of Belize know exactly how their monies were being spent. We have been over and over asking the Mayor to get the financial person to publish those financials. Up to today, we cannot get to the citizens of Belize who pay taxes those financials published
to them so they know how their monies are being spent. And I can only presume that it is because she cannot account for the monies in the City Council that those are not published.
Mr. Finnegan was one of our great supporters during the 05-06 campaign. One would have asked themselves what went wrong. Well I can clearly tell you where the lines were drawn with Mr. Finnegan. The Belize City Council, unauthorized-ly by the Mayor again, was paying the Lik Road talk show monies for airing stuff that the Mayor would put on the show. The City Council found out that this money was being paid to Lik Road, that we did not authorize it, and ordered a stop letter. A stop letter was then sent to Mr. Finnegan telling him that the City Council is strapped for cash and that we can no longer proceed to pay him for the Lik Road talk show. It was from that day forward that I personally know Mr. Finnegan drew the line with the Belize City Council and decided to start going in the Mayor’s corner.
Why things went bad between Mayor Moya and Hon. Boots Martinez was the hidden agenda of Mayor Moya whereby the City Council is limited with equipments, trucks, tractors, manpower, and when the government won Hon. Boots Martinez came to the City Council and I will help you out and give you trucks, I’ll give you tractors, I’ll give you manpower – all you have to do is provide the diesel and the food. Mayor Moya saw things differently. She wanted to pay a certain person $15,000 each time they need equipment to take care of the city. Jules, don’t make no ghost fool you, we are already a strapped City Council and we are trying to use the taxpayer’s money in an efficient manner and we are trying to be as accountable as we can for it. Because Mayor Moya did not have her way to pay for the equipments from the people that she wanted for $15,000 when Boots Martinez would have given us a better deal, maybe $1,000 in food for the men and diesel for the trucks, that is why the boundary line had been drawn between the Mayor and the Hon. Boots Martinez.
My take on the BTB issue, it is not the first time that the Mayor has lied to the residents of Belize City. Monies are being paid to the Belize City Council from BTB. However, Mayor Moya failed again to submit to BTB the way these monies are being spent. For the Mayor to go on TV and say that she has called the Hon. Minister Manuel Heredia, talked to Councilor Esquivel, and by a large extent bring down the government of Belize is a serious offense because BTB has been paying us.
The Belizean public can look at it two ways, they can say well Mayor Noya’s councillors are lazy and they are bullshit, quote by her, or they can say nine people can’t be crazy. Nine people out of 10 in your council, can they all really be crazy at the same time. It’s laughable but it is very serious.
The Belizean public should know that when they go to the polls, there is a Mother Teresa image out there of Mayor Moya, there is a good angel of her and I will not try to bring her down but I will bring the truth to the Belizean public. So when you go and place that ballot October 5th and your hands are shaking depending on what box you’re putting it in, you would have had the information.
Jules in order for many to live, some must die. Martin Luther King took that stand. I can in no way be that man but today I stand firm to tell the residents of Belize that I am willing to take the stand to let them know the truth about what happens in City Hall from here on in.”
Kendra Griffith, News 5
“But isn’t there strength in numbers, where are the other councillors?”
Mark King,
“I have decided to conduct this interview on my own, I had not informed my other councillors. If the other councillors that are in the City Council are a part of this and they are supporting me for this, I believe because we have breached code of the UDP we may all go down. I decided it is better for me to go down on my own and for good people, the Deputy Mayor and the other 8 councillors, to continue to run this city for the people of Belize. That is what I want. I don’t care about winning the re-election. I want to win re-election but I don’t care.
Two and a half years we have been silent. When you go campaigning people say keep unu dirty business in-house but the Mayor of Belize City was the one who let it through the door and even after we signed that agreement with the UDP, Mayor Moya still came out and talked about the Minister of Tourism, the Councillor, and the government by the extension. So I believe it is just and fair that I can speak too. I believe it is just and fair that the UDP will take action on both if not on one. I also believe that after this interview I don’t know what grounds I will stand with the UDP but I can tell you when I leave here the Belizean public has the truth and nothing but the truth and that is something I will always be remembered for.”
Jules Vasquez,
A political observer would say Mark King politically you are a nobody. You were just on a UDP slate that when the tide was going UDP you were elected. You are an inconsequential councillor, you are not Zenaida Moya, she is a national figure, you’re not even Anthony Michael, he is at least a municipal figure.
Mark King,
“Jules maybe you should stick in news because politics is the business of politics. Maybe I am just Mark King but I can tell you this, over 13,000 residents came out to vote for Mark King 2006 and if that is nobody to you then I applaud you my brother.
So what I give you here today has no bearing on what Mayor Moya thinks or feels, or what I think or feel of her. This is professionally dealing with the taxpayers money of the Belizean public that we were sent there to do and we are guided by the City Council Act to do that and now we must go back to the Belizean public. But before the Belizean public goes and put that ballot in that box, they would have had all of this information.
And no politician comes out and speaks the way I do because they know they are going to be chopped. I feel right now my head is on the chopping block, then again Jules you know my military background, so let it be because if one has to sacrifice for many to know, for the Belizean public to know where their tax dollars are going then I will tell them and I am willing to take that risk because politicians should be about democracy, about patriotism to this country, and about the people that voted for them. In 2006 thirteen thousand and odd people voted for Mark King and those nine councillors. We must give them something back and today I bring it raw and uncut to them.
Today I might go down as a fallen soldier but I do it with joy, I do it with laughter. I do it for my country and I do it for my party any day, any time.”
We’re not so sure if King is so happy and laughing tonight after word of the interview trickled though the party today and met some very angry reactions, but heart of a jihadist such as his, we’d imagine Councillor King is just fine.
