body,td,th { font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; }
Switching now to Foreign Affairs - last night you heard the Minister hold the line for Venezuela - whose elections Belize has not criticized - even though the results sending Nicolas Maduro to a third term are widely contested.
Belize's support of the Chavez and now the Maduro governments are well known - and it dates back more than two decades - since they supported the Esquivel and Musa Administrations with funding for low income housing, the Barrow Administration with Petrocaribe funding and the Briceno Administration with a deep discount on debt.
And this has long bothered the US State Department - that Belize and many other Caribbean countries hold a deep alliance with Venezuela.
So, is the recent 125 million US dollar grant from the US sponsored Millennium Challenge Corporation the education and energy sectors - a way to sway Belize's loyalty back to Washington and away from Caracas?
We asked the Foreign Minister:
Francis Fonseca,Minister of Foreign Affairs
"We know that the Americans for a long time have been quite exercised about the influence that Venezuela exerts over the poorer countries in this hemisphere by using Petro-diplomacy. And that was visualized in Petrocaribe for as long as it lasted. Is the Millennium Grant a way to try and shift, sympathetic countries away from that Venezuelan loyalty."
"Yeah, I think, you know, it's not for me to characterize the with the objectives of, of, of the United States government. I would say to you that our discussions with the MCC Group, have been an absolute good faith. I think they genuinely and sincerely, based on our discussions, understand that there are serious constraints to growth, in countries like Belize, they have had a dialog and discussion with us over many, many months, for us, Belize, for us to identify those constraints. But didn't come from them, it came from us. And we said, listen, education, especially investing in technical vocational education, you know, that's the constraint to growth for Belize. Energy, trying to reduce the cost of energy. That's a constraint. So, you know, we are absolutely comfortable with the manner in which this grant has been approved and the process that took place because it came from us. and, so it's not for me to question the objectives."
