BELIZE CITY, Wed. Dec. 27, 2017– Listeners and viewers of KREM Radio’s Sunday Review with host YaYa Marin Coleman and co-host William “Bill” Lindo, were privy to an unusually candid outpouring of criticism and analysis of Prime Minister Dean O. Barrow about two weeks ago by attorney Audrey Matura, a former editor of the UDP’s Guardian newspaper and former United Democratic Party (UDP) senator.
In discussing charges made against the Auditor General by her staff at the Audit Department, YaYa Marin said that the Prime Minister said that he has known about the problem for more than a year, but he did not want to speak about it because he did not want it to be perceived as political interference.
Matura said that it was not the place of the Prime Minister to weigh in on that problem. “It is not his place to do anything. He is not the minister responsible for the public service. These are educated people and I believe their motive is malicious,” said Matura.
Matura said that the Prime Minister has an art of playing with words and he is very strategic. “A man who says he will not say anything, and yet makes a pronouncement against the very thing he said he won’t say anything about, is a dangerous person. You can’t believe anything he says. He has been able to get away with that type of speaking and language for too long… and he is always behind the scenes, controlling everything,” she said.
Matura went on to tell a story about an experience she had when she worked at the Guardian newspaper and she wrote stories that were critical of Michael Ashcroft. “[Barrow]…called me in one day and told me, ‘I don’t want you to write against him anymore’. And he told me I had to go to a meeting with Michael Ashcroft, because he wanted to meet me,” Matura said.
Matura further recalled, “So I went to the meeting and I was in disagreement. Dean Barrow’s favorite phrase to me was, ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. So that’s why I call him the piper. But I do not sing to his tune. In short, I continued writing against Michael Ashcroft. So what they did, they put Denys Barrow as my immediate supervisor. I had to send the dummy of the newspaper to Denys Barrow to approve before we send it to bed, as we call it, to get it printed. Many times I sent a fake dummy and still printed what I wanted, because I refused to bend to their wishes. And that’s why I eventually left the party. So, I know from experience that Wave Radio, Guardian newspaper, would never take up an agenda that doesn’t have the stamp of approval of the Prime Minister.”
Marin-Coleman asked Matura what can be done legally to Wave Radio for their continual disrespect of women. Matura replied, “I think they need some public flogging of them. I don’t want to go legally, because we need to follow the trend the Prime Minister has set. He breaks the rule of law, so why should I comply with the rule of law. The people are not understanding what has become of this society. They are not appreciating what the Prime Minister personally has done every time he gets on the media and gives an interview and says that the court has made a wrong decision and he will not comply with it. That is breaking and disrespecting the rule of law. So, if your Prime Minister could disrespect the rule of law, who me, I don’t have to comply with it… We do not want to look at this country for what it is. You know what… what I see is a terrible trend.”
“I could go through every agreement, every law they passed and show you the hypocrisy of the Prime Minister… He uses his legal knowledge to undermine this country,” remarked Matura.
“Remember he broke the law with that PetroCaribe spending, and he went and passed a new law retroactively to legalize his illegal action. That is a tyrant,” Matura said.