The Mayor versus the Z-7 went into day two today – with Zenaida Moya Flowers having a full out press conference, and Councillor Dion Leslie coming back at her. We’ll start with Leslie. In her remarkable interview last night, the Mayor accused Leslie of committing the council to an undertaking with Belize Maintenance Limited without proper authority of the council. He did it while he was acting Mayor as the mayor was on maternity leave in October of 2009. Today Councillor Leslie called us from Miami to say the Mayor deliberately mischaracterized his motives in signing that document.
Dion Leslie, Former Deputy Mayor
“As you aware I am out of the country but I read the transcript online and I felt I had to call to clarify the statement. If you remember you can look back to what was happening in October 2009, BML had just gone on strike. BML had not let go but he had sent home over 100 workers, keeping just a skeleton staff because he was not able to pay his payroll because of outstanding payments from the council. So what was happening is they went on strike, they were on strike for over a week, and me as Acting Mayor at that time, I was leader of the council, and I wasn’t going to make that happen. So if you backtrack Mr. Ellis had said that if he didn’t get paid, he would have to let go everyone. I got wind that the unions were going to get involved and make it even bigger and we didn’t want that to happen.
So the agreement was made, the councillors were called and informed of the agreement, no one had any objection to the agreement. In fact the agreement was no secret. After we signed the agreement and Mr. Ellis agreed to take the workers off the picket line and put them back to work, we had a press conference to tell the public this and tell the public that listen we found a way to move forward with this thing. So councillors knew about this. The Mayor is saying that no one knew about it and that I went about it myself. Councillors knew about it, the financial controller knew about it, the then Director of Finance Mr. Davis knew about it. It is not like I just woke up one day and say I’ll do this. And it is not that we paid BML for money they did not earn, the agreement was to pay BML for money that we owed to them that by law we had to pay them because of their contract.”
Jules Vasquez,
“But do you concede that it was not done in the strictest adherence with the council regulations?”
Dion Leslie,
“It wasn’t taken a caucus before the decision was made but it was still approved by caucus later on. However before the contract really came into effect we still took it to caucus and all the councillors present at the caucus approve that agreement. Now for her to take this and turn it on me and that well I did this and he did that and it is worst, I won’t even engage in that, I won’t entertain it. I don’t know why the Mayor singled me out specifically, it wasn’t myself who came at the Mayor directly yesterday at the press conference so why did she turn around and single me out. I don’t understand that, she has her reasons why she does things. I don’t want to play that game, I won’t start a back and forth between myself and the Mayor.
What done is done and we move forward. Like we said all we want is for the Mayor to conduct the people’s business as the law prescribes and respect the 10 councillors and let us move forward and all I ask the Mayor is let’s move on from here, let’s do things properly. If you didn’t do things properly and I didn’t do things properly well we’re both to blame but from now on going forward we will do it properly.”
If you’ll indulge us with just one more Z-7/G-7 parallel, we note that Leslie, the outgoing Deputy Mayor is out of the country as was the G-7’s Deputy Leader John Briceno who was in Chicago when that story broke in August of 2004. But back to 2010 – and this one still has some legs – today the Mayor struck again with a full out press conference – we’ll have that report a little later on.
