But today the leader of the opposition had a far less charitable spin. He agreed with his father that PM Briceno has a habit of saying "foolish things." Today we asked him for his views on the PM's comments, and while he said there is concern for it escalating matters, he zeroed in on something else Briceno said: that our BDF is no match for GAF. He added that if he is elected, one of their mandates will be to strengthen Belize's military forces.
Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"We all know that the prime minister has large shortcomings, we know that he can't think properly, he can't speak properly and this is just another example, a very embarrassing example of his inabilities and his unsuitability to lead this country because something like that could be taken and while he's trying to chastise Wil Maheia, what is more agitating and what escalates things more than you telling a country you want to invade the country, what is he thinking? But we know the prime minister, his brain is empty, his head is empty and that's just the reality, I think that there's nobody in Belize, when he does these things, we have become used to the incompetence, we have become used to him being an airhead and it's unfortunate that it comes at the cost of our national security…"
"Because what if the hawks in Guatemala say what, prime minister said he's going to Guatemala, and let us invade Belize. but what we should be talking about is when the prime minister and Courtenay say that we only have a thousand troops and Guatemala has 20,000 troops, we need to increase our military, that is something that as prime minister in a UDP government, my Cabinet and I will look at, increasing our military, we cannot wait for anybody to save us, for our prime minister to say that we are basically helpless, we need to come out of that. We are a peaceful nation, we are a nation that wants to live in harmony with our neighbors but we have enough people, it's 400,000 people, if all of our people need to join the military to protect against any invaders, that is what we should do and instead of getting these loans from bilateral partners for other projects, we need to start to militarize."
"We need to make sure, as I said, we have a lot of troubled youth, they need to go into the military as they turn 18, or if they're going to school, as they graduate, give us a year, give us two years. All of our men and women need to be trained to defend our country."
For the record, the Guatemalan Armed Forces have about 45,000 soldiers with a half a billion dollar budget, the BDF has a thousand men with a budget in the single digit millions.
