Tonight, the Ombudsman's office is still empty almost a year after the previous one went home. And while the PUP has appointed Retired Major Gilbert Swaso for the post, last Friday when we reached out to him, he told us that he still had not taken up office.
It's a huge gap in keeping the government accountable and during all this time, Belizeans who needed to access the service had nowhere else to go. And to an outside observer, it wouldn't seem like the government isn't acting with any urgency to get Swaso into the office.
But when we posed that observation to the PM, he bristled, saying that he's like, really, really busy:
Courtney Menzies:
"Is it that the government doesn't find this office of importance considering it's a key agent in accountability?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I think that last portion that you said is totally uncalled for. We certainly realize that the office of the Ombudsman is a very important position. But like in everything, because you're so busy with many other things sometimes you overlook the issue of the Ombudsman and since September of last year we
said we had to find an Ombudsman and find somebody qualified, somebody that has the humility to serve because in the Ombudsman you're not dealing with rich folks that can afford to get their own attorneys, these are the local folks, grassroots people, so we felt that we needed to find the adequate person, and we saw that in Major Swaso, for him to start. As far as I'm concerned, he should have come onboard the starting of this month, the first of January, why that happened, I don't know, you're giving me news so after this I'm going to call the Cabinet Secretary to find out what's the holdup, why is it that he has not been officially appointed to start the job."
We note that the new Ombudsman was a former PUP mayor for Dangriga.
