After having to postpone the House Meeting last Friday due to illness, Prime Minister Briceno has rebounded and is traveling on official business. The PM left today for the Eighth Summit of Heads of State and Government of CARICOM and Cuba in Bridgetown, Barbados. After that he island hops to the Dominican Republic for the 56th meeting of SICA. The PM returns on December 10th and the House Meeting will now be held on Monday, December 12th.
But, before he left, the PM sent a letter to the President of OCEANA's Board of Directors in Washington DC, basically Janelle Chanona's boss.
As you've heard, the PM was not too pleased about the broadside he got from OCEANA almost three weeks ago when Chanona said that the Briceno Administration intended to proceed with seismic testing - possibly as a prelude to seismic testing. To stop that OCEANA launched a petition to trigger a referendum on the issue.
Well, in the letter dated December second, the PM tells Chanona's boss, quote, "I state for the record that no Ministry or Department...has or proposes to authorize offshore seismic testing...The written assurance this letter represents supersedes any prior statements or inferences." End quote. And then in the last paragraph, the PM gets to the bottom line where he series to stop the petition for a referendum. He says, quote "I consider the referendum proposed by Oceana Belize to be unnecessary. Instead, it would the best for us to re-engage meaningfully and in good faith, and to refocus on those many marine conservation challenges that require collaborative action now."
