At her press conference yesterday, Belize City Mayor Zenaida Moya Flowers lashed out at Councillor Laura Esquivel-Frampton. – publicly calling her out for missing 19 out of 29 council meetings between September 15th and October 23rd of last year. It was a direct and personal attack and today Esquivel-Frampton fired back. She told us that while she doesn’t want to get in a back and forth with the Mayor, there is a perfectly good explanation for why she missed those meetings.
Laura Esquivel-Frampton, City Councillor
“I was on maternity leave for 14 weeks. Every woman knows that by law we are entitled to fourteen weeks maternity leave. The mayor chose not to take her all her maternity leave time. I chose to stay home with my child and to breastfeed my child and do what’s best for my child and have that bonding. This is a choice that we as women are able to make. Yes like I said I have missed meetings before my maternity leave but again, not to get into a back and forth, but no proper notice was given for those meetings.
I need to point out first of all that in the first term, I am actually the councillor who had the attendance record, I had a better attendance record than the Mayor herself. When we won again we decided we would turn over a new leave and started working again. As soon as we won we realized that this was business as usual all over again. We get one day notice, two day notice. Sometimes the morning before we get call to meetings. The Mayor is focusing on this one vote, we are saying it is not about one vote and about one meeting. This is about a systematic way of running things where for example just a couple weeks ago a letter was sent to the Ministry of Local Government requesting the removal of a member of the Liquor Licensing Board and replacement with another. The council had no knowledge of this, this wasn’t a request from the council. These are just examples here and there.
She is now attacking me personally or Dion personally and we have to remind the people this is not the first time that people have come out against the Mayor. Look at the constant amount of managers who have resigned and come out and spoken against her; past employees, the previous nine councillors that came out. Are all these people crazy and saying something that is different? Is she one by one going to attack us or just address the problem and move on so we can work.”
Councillor Roger Espejo also told us he would release a statement today commenting on the Mayor’s remarks about his holding a grudge against her because she took away the BML portfolio.
