And now, as the new Minister of Defence and Border Security, the PM will have to figure out some of the supply issues for the BDF and Coast Guard - because many favored suppliers are linked to politicians in his party.
Today in Orange Walk, he turned to a well-worn defence and told CTV-3 that he was unaware of what was happening:
John Briceño, Prime Minister
"And if there was any wrongdoing, being public officers or politicians, they will have to answer. I am not going to cover this up because this cannot continue within any government. We have been taking a number of steps to be able to address this. I was unaware of what was happening. Again, I saw about the boots and well, they sent me a letter, and what did I do? I sent it to the minister and said, "Hey, this is what they are saying, take a look into this." They came to me and now I am trying to find out, and the concern... nothing was really going on. I spoke to CEO Usher and he says he is going to compile the information on the boots because the price that is being quoted by the media is the price without duty and without transportation and then the GST and so forth, and yet the price that was purchased included all of that. And now he is saying when you do comparables of the both of them, it comes up about the same. So I told him, "Make that known to the media. It is important. It is important for us to show we are taking action." We are going to do better. We are setting up the central procurement unit. We hope the legislation should be passed by the house and senate before the end of this year, and that will then be able to centralize how we purchase goods and services for the government of Belize."
