Tonight, the Prime Minister is welcoming guests to the Belize Investment Summit in San Pedro. He made a social media reel this afternoon where he's making a spokesmodel worthy pitch for the summit.
Not surprisingly, Leader of the Opposition Shyne Barrow is not impressed. He's skipping this summit, but just went to another in Atlanta, Georgia. That's called the Invest Fest described as a festival combining investing, entrepreneurship, pop culture and entertainment in a festival setting.
Barrow took the main stage - and he described it as "cool". We challenged him on his investment record:
Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"They have an entity called Earn Your Leisure, pretty popular podcast and all they do, they do similar to what Khalilah Enriquez does, you know financial analyst, financial journalism, talk about the stock market, talk about investments. They talk about everything which has never been done before with the type of cool, that hip hop cool."
"I was invited to speak as a political leader, as a Grammy Award winning former rapper, and talk about that journey, you know, the criminal justice reform journey, the rehabilitation journey, the hip hop to house of representative's journey, and how I plan to help create wealth in Belize."
Jules Vasquez
"Your critics will say, well, you are once again showing a bias for North America by being at this summit in Atlanta. When you should be at the investment summit in San Pedro, these are foreign direct investors who want to make investment in your country. Why aren't you here?"
Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"Because Prime Minister Briceno is not real. He needs to get real. And we have not seen that. What we have seen is complete bias, complete discrimination against our own investors, our own Belizean investors."
"Again, they pick and choose who they want to invest in the country, because you go back to Vulcan, you go to the continuous wrestling with BSI, where their minister of agriculture passed an unconstitutional SI to target the multinationals."
"So Briceno is not serious about anything. He's not real about anything. He has lost all credibility. And everything that he said about Belize being open for business is absolutely not true."
Jules Vasquez
"Investors just want to do business. They want to know that they are looking at a country that has a stable investment climate. And the recent letter you sent to Royal Caribbean, it shows someone who is frightening the anti-investment."
"I know that is a very specific agreement you're talking about. And I understand that. But any person, any leader, any potential leader who would say that, it can be argued, is showing almost a dictatorial streak. It's saying that you may think you have a contract, but you ain't got nothing. because when we come in there, we are mashed that up."
Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"And you have identified that this is a very specific agreement. This is not just an agreement that was signed and went through all of the proper procedures and we just don't agree with it. This was an illegal agreement. This was an agreement born in corruption. An agreement sustained by corruption, mired in controversy. If I were an investor in the position of Royal Caribbean, I would have divested from that immediately."
"These aren't accusations that are being made from partisan hacks, as I have accused others of being. This is something that the entire nation is outraged about. And the Prime Minister of this country was caught trying to legislate an agreement that everybody from every part of society felt was an egregious agreement."
"So it is important to communicate with Royal Caribbean in case they are not paying attention, in case the Prime Minister is fooling them the way he fooled the Belizean people, and they are telling them everything is going to be okay. It is important that they understand that governments do change and that when the government changes, we are going to look at whatever agreements were done in the dark, in corruption, in malfeasance. We are going to examine it and they should be put on notice."
