And while we had Senator Courtenay - we wanted to ask him about that luxury SUV that his successor is driving. As we showed you on Friday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs used donor funds to purchase a quarter million dollar pre-owned Toyota Land Cruiser for Francis Fonseca at the end of March.
As we recall Courtenay never rocked it quite like that. We asked him what he thinks of the 245 thousand dollar SUV:
Jules Vasquez
"But I recall when you were foreign minister, you used to have your official vehicle, I recall it, maybe I'm wrong. was a Mux. Isuzu MUX."
"You know, some furor has been raised about the quarter million dollar Land Cruiser."
"What's your take on it?"
Eamon Courtenay, Former foreign Minister
"Honestly, I think, well, first of all, we have countries, and it's not only one who have, from time to time, made donations to Belize and specifically to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And whilst I was there, we made a request to upgrade the fleet for the very reason that I believe this was a conference tomorrow and we have heads of state or foreign ministers or environment ministers coming in and said we need proper buses, we need proper vehicles to move them around."
"So that's not unusual. And countries from time to time are quite, prepared, disposed to assisting us in that way. And as I said, we got whilst I was there, I don't know what was available when the minister, you know, in the second term, the vehicle that I was using, I don't know whether he used that or whether he used the one that he had at education. I don't know what he did. But to be quite frank, as you said, the vehicle I was certainly using had some quite some mileage on it. And, you know, I see absolutely nothing wrong in the minister using this, vehicle for his, movements, which is quite considerable, going up and down to Belmopan and other places as he has responsibility for culture, he has responsibility for immigration, which will require him to travel around quite a bit and sometimes off road."
The 2024 vehicle was bought pre-owned from Car Guys for 250,000 dollars - while the Toyota Dealer told us he could have gotten Government a 2026 land cruise with a 5 year warranty for 245 thousand dollars. That dealer Belize Diesel and Equipment concedes they had none in country at the time.
