BELIZE CITY, Mon. Feb. 17, 2020– Today, Prime Minister Dean Barrow penned a reply to a letter sent to him by the Leader of the Opposition People’s United Party (PUP), Hon. John Briceño, on Friday, February 14, 2020, which said, “As you are aware, on the 31st January 2020 the Hon. Chief Justice ruled that all the Supplementary Appropriations Acts which you told to the National Assembly, covering the period 2004 -2018 were unconstitutional. This confirmed the view long held by the People’s United Party that the profligate spending under your leadership was illegal and most likely corrupt. Since 2008, your Government has spent in excess of $1.5 billion dollars without legislative approval. Indeed, for the fiscal year 2012-2013, there has not even been an unlawful Supplementary Bill brought to parliament.

“During the end of claim 142 of 2019 – Briceno & Espat v Barrow & Waight, the Financial Secretary was clear – he testified that he told you that the monies to be spent had not been approved by Parliament, but that you instructed that the Special Warrants be prepared authorizing the unconstitutional expenditure. Therefore, there can be no doubt that you knowingly violated the Finance and Audit (Reform) Act (FARA. This is a criminal offense. I say no more on this at this time as that is now a matter for the Police Department and the Director of Public Prosecutions,” said Briceño’s letter, in part.

Barrow, in replying, told Briceño in part, “You and your Party are the most outrageous hypocrites and frauds ever known in the modern politics and governance of our country … Your pretend anger in this regard is a nauseating example of the patent and knowing falsity of your position … all UDP and PUP-sponsored Supplementary Appropriations were done at a time when both Parties were certain that the Constitution of Belize expressly permitted prior spending and subsequent Parliamentary approval. This, for us and several others in similar Caricom jurisdictions, was a matter of the exigencies of the public service and financial administration.

“For you to suddenly get religion and inveigh against what both the UDP and the PUP thought not only permissible but indispensable, is a most flagrant case of two-faced posturing and naked dishonesty.”

Barrow continues: “For the avoidance of any doubt I make the following clear to you. My Administration considers the Chief Justice’s ruling entirely unsatisfactory, not least because there is as yet no reasoned, written judgement produced. We intend to appeal and seek a stay and there is in any event the Chief Justice’s own 6 month suspension of his injunction.
“We therefore have no intention of seeking any Constitutional amendment any time soon. It therefore follows that your attempt to lay down conditions for any cooperation you might consider giving the UDP, is merely another empty charade. If you actually meant to be taken seriously, I tell you now that-no doubt fittingly-you are on a fool’s errand.”

“I utterly reject your demands,” Barrow told Briceño.

What is plain, then, is that the Prime Minister is telling the Leader of the Opposition that he has no need of him, or his party, to effect any change to the Constitution because there will be no need to do so.

n a telephone interview tonight, we asked Opposition Leader Hon. John Briceño, to respond to the Prime Minister’s reply to his letter.

“The Prime Minister’s response to a serious letter that we sent to him expressing serious concerns about his management of the country’s finances is disgraceful and disgusting, because he refuses to address the issues that are pointed out to him in the letter,” Briceño replied.

“As usual, the Prime Minister answers nasty, viciously and spitefully, as he usually does when he finds himself boxed in. He never addresses the issue; he attacks the individual,” Hon. Briceño added, saying that “that has been his modus operandi since he has became Prime Minister, and it worked for him for many years, but now it no longer works.”

Briceño said that it reminds him of a hunting hound that has lost his teeth, and has no energy and has to lean on a post to hound. That’s what the Prime Minister reminds me of.
The Prime Minister is essentially saying that he did not violate the Finance and Audit Reform Act, or something to that effect, Briceño said.

“I think something is wrong with the Prime Minister to say that. The Chief Justice at the Supreme Court said that his expenditures, his reckless spending that he did, and then come back with supplementary budget after he has spent the money, is unconstitutional. The Prime Minister’s own lawyer that he brought in from the Caribbean went in front of the Chief Justice and said that he recognizes that it was unconstitutional,” Briceño pointed out.
This is the very same Prime Minster who amended the Finance and Audit Reform Act to say that any Minister of Finance that knowingly doesn’t follow the law, commits a criminal act. He is the one that spent $1.5 billion and then he comes and asks for approval. He knows it was wrong then, and it is wrong today, and tomorrow, he knows that it is still wrong, Briceño said.

Briceño said that the PUP’s demonstration on Sunday is against the corrupt practices of this government, from the Prime Minister’s act that has been ruled on at the Supreme Court, to the recently party leader elected for less than 72 hours. We have a long list of deeds, let’s not even remind the Belizean people about the$400,000 that Gaspar Vega’s son was found guilty of at court, and he has no shame, because he was out there at the convention with his father, when his father refuses to go to House meetings. They have no shame, the Party Leader told Amandala.

Feature photo: Hon. John Briceño, Leader of the Opposition People’s United Party (PUP)