And while Barrow insists that the UDP was not protesting the investment summit itself, they do have issues with it - mostly because he says that the PUP has not been particularly investor-friendly. He highlights projects like Waterloo that can't get off the ground, and foreign investors like Vulcan who weren't given the time of day, and says that the government doesn't have the track record to hold such a summit.
Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"The demonstration was against the PUP government at large and the failed policies of the Briceno administration and a hostile investment climate is part of the reason we were protesting because in Belize you have two of your biggest investors in Mr Mike Feinstein and Lord Michael Ashcroft, who are two of the biggest investors in this country, trying to get two of the biggest investments ever off the ground and there has been absolutely no assistance from the government, in fact the government has tried to undermine their investments in favor of a nepotistic, corrupt investment. And then you look at the foreign direct investment, you look at the multinational such as Vulcan, such as BSI, who have, Vulcan didn't even get an opportunity to meet with the government, to even discuss what it is that they would like to do in Belize and they were totally dismissed, they were, in fact, expelled from the country in essence and told don't ever return and then you look at BSI with the government minister passing an unconstitutional regulation to favor the union that he is a part of which is a rank conflict of interest so when you talk about investor friendly, open for business government, the Briceno administration is certainly not fitting of any such accolade and so that is what we were protesting because that is one of the things we were protesting, not the people that were visiting, I know that the former president of Colombia has a questionable human rights record, but from the things that I have read, but that's not what we were protesting, what we were protesting, as I've said, this hostile investment climate which impacts employment, it impact economic development because if investors aren't coming here, putting their money into our economy, we can't hire people and we cannot stimulate the economy."
