So, while the teachers were outside making their public stand for good governance, the Senators were inside debating a number of bills, including the General Revenue Appropriation Bill for the fiscal year 2021/2021.
And very much like the debate in the House, representatives of the 2 mass parties had very divergent views of Prime Minister Briceno's plan for public spending.
Here are a few excerpts from the debate in the Upper House:
Hon. Eamon Courtenay, Leader of Government Business
"There is no doubt that what we have before us is an austerity budget. Madam President a fair question to be asked by the Belizean people, to be asked by senators is why was Prime Minister Briceno forced to present an austerity budget? The answer is as clear as day. We on this side had 3 choices: continue the reckless unconstitutional illegal and unlawful spending as was done by the United Democratic Party and we rejected that; go to the IMF and enter into a program. The prescription proposed by the IMF is to reduce the number of zero rated GST items and to tax them at the rate of GST, increase the GST. They don't say it here, but it is 19% they are advocating. They go further to say reduce the exemptions from business tax and in fact tax the hotel sector and to go ahead and look for other areas where we can impose more taxes. Let's not misunderstand their coded language. Reduce the wage bill. That is not only a cut, but they are also advocating a cut in the number of persons employed in the public sector and they have warned that unless something is done, there will be a disorderly adjustment to the peg. That means devaluation."
"The Honorable Prime Minister, the Cabinet rejected the IMF road and we have chosen to adopt a carefully calibrated and designed plan that is homegrown and we believe will get us to a better Belize. We have found a state of public finances that can be describe as a national crisis and I say very quickly 4.2 billion of government debt. That is $10,000 per citizen, 130% debt to GDP, $700 million borrowed by the United Democratic Party in the last 2 years, a 30% drop in government revenues because of the pandemic, a 14% contraction in the economy 2020, 29% unemployment and 64,000 Belizeans losing their jobs in 2020."
"The United Democratic Party left this country as the 6th most indebted nation and we experience the 5th worst economic crash on 2020 under the United Democratic Party. That is what we are facing. And so it is time that we reckoned and take a count of where we are. We say do not punish the tax payers, the students, the public, because taxes that should have been collected by the UDP were not collected and are now not available to pay public officers and teachers, to provide relief and to spend on education, health, housing and citizen security. It was the United Democratic Party who gave repeated land tax amnesty to wealthy land owners including the infamous 90 million write-off last year in the midst of an economic crisis"
"This government comes into office on the 12th November, 2020 and one of the first things is to look at the revenue due and payable to the country and people of Belize and we were astounded to learn from the director of the Belize Tax Services that her estimate of taxes not collected by the Dean Barrow administration amounts to 500 million dollars."
Hon. Mike Peyrefitte, UDP Senator
"The constitution is clear. The senate cannot stop a money bill. So for those of us who don't know, know very clearly, the budget has already passed you know. If all 13 of us in here were to vote against this budget, it will still passed. So when you vote on this budget today don't claim that you have to vote yes, because you don't want to stop the financing of the country from moving. You could freely vote no, because you can't stop it, but voting no on this budget will let the government know that you are not satisfied with what they have done. This is not a government that was in the wilderness for 12 years. You would have thought that coming into government, the Prime Minister spoke about the leader of the opposition's maiden speech, but he also had a maiden speech and this is his maiden budget and I want to ask all of you in here today where is the vision in this budget. What is in here other than changing the topics from ministry of foreign affairs for example to ministry of foreign affairs, immigration and foreign trade - nothing, cut and paste."
'You would think that a prime minister who was in the wilderness and a temporary opposition himself at times would have came through the doors blasting with fresh ideas, with fresh notions of how to grow the economy, because that's what he use to say when we raise taxes and we had to make loans - grow the economy. And I'm dying to hear from Senator Herrera, because the chamber of commerce has been very quite in terms of the business aspect analyzing this budget and where we are."
Hon. Kevin Herrera, Business Senator
"Any economist will be able to tell you what to do to correct the challenges we face from a purely technical standpoint, but many of those solutions would have a catastrophic human cost and in many respects are not viable options because of the need to lessen the impact and the citizens of this country. In this environment a balance approach is very important, while we need to correct the imbalances and reposition ourselves for the eventual rebound, we must employ fiscal discipline while being sensitive to the plight of our fellow citizens."
Hon. Bishop Alvin Benguche, Church Senator
"So I stand here today to support what is before us and just to remind the government that this shared sacrifice must mean everybody with the understanding of shared hope to come."
