A family from the Orange Walk District has come forward to complain that one of their loved ones was politically victimized in the selection process for the next intake of police recruits. They are insisting that their son was one of the leading candidates for that northern district, until suddenly when he was cut from the list of finalists.
The complainant is the applicant's father, who tells us that he was the campaign manager for a UDP Standard Bearer who lost the November 2020 General Elections. He says that his son, who has no ties to politics, began following all the necessary steps late last year to qualify for recruitment. He's trying to become one of the lucky 225 candidates who will be recruited out of several thousand Belizeans who applied to join the department.
He sat the entrance exam and reportedly received high marks. After that, he participated in the fitness tests, all the necessary medical check-ups, and background checks into his police record. His father insists that reliable sources from within the department were assuring him that his son's results were all very favourable. In fact, this father claims that his son stood out as the best applicant for the Orange Walk District.
This father then asserts that his son's name was on the final list, which was supposed to be submitted to the Commissioner and the Minister of Home Affairs for final approval. But according to this father's inside sources, his son's name was recently removed from the list, and that there are other candidates who made the final cut, but who didn't meet the minimum requirements for recruitment.
The applicant's father now strongly believes that he was victimized because of his father's connection to the United Democratic Party. Both father and son share the same names, and so the father thinks that he was unfairly pulled from the list of finalists when the political connection was made to the Opposition Party.
Yesterday evening, we got a chance to ask Police Commissioner Chester Williams about this disgruntled father's complaint. Here's what he had to say:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police "The process of selecting the 225 successful applicants for this recruit squad has been an exceedingly tedious process. The truth is, they are a lot of good candidates well above the 225 we can accept and I wish that we could have accepted more than 225 but that is the figure allotted to us, so we can only go to that extend and I have read what you sent in the sense that the father is alleging that his son was on the list until recent and was removed, that is not so. I have checked the list from we began and when it comes to the list of those who pass the exam, the son was successful in the exam, he did well in the exam and from there we began to narrow down. My policy was that anybody who was successful in the exam that they must be allowed to take the medical and the vetting so that they can broaden our scope of nominees and so all those persons who sat the exam and were successful were allowed to do the medical and the vetting and indeed the son did pass the medical, he did pass the vetting but so did many others, well above 225 and so when it comes down to narrowing down the list, I think when we went to the 4th elimination process, that was when his son was eliminated and I can say that elimination has absolutely nothing to politics, I don't even know the family but like I said, we're trying to look for the best of the best and I'm not going to say that his son may not have been one of the best of the best but there is several of them. And so, it is just a situation where I would ask the father and the son to be bit more patient because even though we have selected the 225 persons, we still have people who are going to be on the waiting list in the event that out of those 225 should drop out within the first 2 weeks of training, then we replace them with persons who will be on the waiting list."
This evening, we contacted Home Affairs Minister Kareem Musa for comment, and via WhatsApp, he told us, quote, "I have gotten complaints even from well-known PUP families. Unfortunately, we only have space for 225 recruits out of a total of 5000 applicants, so it is reasonable to expect that there would be a good number of disappointed applicants." End quote.
We've seen a communique that congratulates all the applicants who made the final cut for police recruit intake #95. Training is scheduled to start on Sunday, May 16th at 8 a.m., at the Police Training Academy in Belmopan.
