And while the current deputy and the former deputy were the main event, the under card wasn’t too shabby either. It featured former Prime Minister Said Musa back in debate form – tackling the current Prime Minister on the issue of unemployment. With the vocal support of a feisty PUP crowd that filled half of the visitors’ gallery, Musa upbraided the UDP for undermining investor confidence and leaving breadwinners jobless.
Hon. Said Musa, Former Prime Minister
“And at a time when food prices have escalated by over 13%, one of the highest inflation rates in food in decades then we have to ask ourselves what is this doing to the head of households who cannot get a job. Who will put the food on the table? Who will pay the rent. The water bill? The light bill? Who will take care of the extra fees that have to be paid for the education of their children? People need work in order to realize their personality, their human nature. That is the fact of it.”
Hon. Johnny Briceno, PUP Leader
“Mr. Speaker the Hon. Member should keep his mouth shut.”
Speaker Emil Arguelles,
“Honorable Member for Cayo North. Please proceed Hon. Member for Fort George.”
Hon. Said Musa,
“Mr. Speaker….”
Speaker Emil Arguelles,
“Hon. Member for Cayo North.”
Hon. Said Musa,
“Mr. Speaker I have gotten used to the interruptions from the Member for Cayo North. He doesn’t bother me at all but I wish he would keep his mouth shut for just a few moments. I know he is very frustrated sitting on the backbench. We know he wants to be a Minister and he will never be once Dean Barrow is the Prime Minister. We know all that.
The UDP manifesto promised us the Belizean people 5,000 jobs in the tourism sector alone; 5,000. Instead of 5,000 additional jobs, we’ve been losing
5,000 jobs since the UDP came into office. We’ve been losing jobs in the tourism sector. In order to attract investment to Belize you have to have confidence in the economy and that is the rub, that is the rub. The problem in Belize right now and it is unfortunate because it is so early in the term of this new UDP government but there is a crisis of confidence already setting in and the reason for this is because of a practice that developed of litigation, confrontation, taking on all the investors, business people, instead of cooperating and trying to find solutions.”
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“All of us are intrigued to see the return of apparently the true leader of PUP. This business of suggesting that we are anti-investors is a way to try to get away from the fact that this government is above all nationalistic and will not countenance the kinds of arrangements with so called investors that are clearly and egregiously and flagrantly against the interests of the Belizean people in order for us to demonstrate for the member for Fort George that we are pro-investment we must for example countenance the Accommodation Agreement. You talk about confrontation, well I will tell you there will be confrontation with any investor with whom you have signed the kind of agreement that is of the sort of that we see represented in the infamous accommodation agreement.”
And while the boisterous support from the gallery gave the PUP more muscle in the House than it has shown in almost two years – in the end – and we mean, the very end, it proved too much. Just when the Prime Minister was thirty seconds away form wrapping up the day’s final presentation, the Speaker of the House, after more than a dozen warnings, asked police to remove two rows of PUP supporters. The group resisted briefly, but walked out...just as everyone else was because the meeting was finished.
