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Briceño: GoB still paying for UDP land grab

GeneralBriceño: GoB still paying for UDP land grab

Belmopan, Fri. Dec. 3, 2021– During the House of Representatives meeting on Friday, Hon. John Briceño, in his capacity as Minister of Finance, rose to introduce a Supplementary Appropriations Bill so that his administration could secure an additional $45 million dollars outside of the current budget to cover a range of expenses and outlays — including over $2 million to cover compensation for land acquired under the previous administration — something that appeared to anger him greatly and that led to a heated verbal exchange between himself and the Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Patrick Faber.

Hon. Briceño remarked during his introduction of the bill that the bill became necessary to address bills left behind by the past UDP administration, including outstanding payables at the Ministry of Defence and Border Security that amounted to about $2.5 million. He then went on to mention an additional two million dollars that would be necessary for outstanding compensation payable arising from the past government’s “excessive, reckless if not corrupt behavior.” “We must pay for land they acquired,” he said.

The Prime Minister was specifically referring to land in the Belama Phase 5 area that he claimed was ultimately transferred to Roosevelt Blades, who was reportedly a close associate of the Leader of the Opposition, Patrick Faber.

“How much did they pay for the land in Belama phase 5? Six and a half million dollars. And who did they give all the land to? Some Blades. We are paying 6.5 million dollars, supposedly they sold it for about seventy? How much? Fifty thousand dollars. Leader of the Opposition, that’s shameful. He is your man. You’re shameful. He is your man. You should tell him bring back the land so you could give it to the people. We are paying 6.5 million dollars – the taxpayers, including you. And the member from Corozal, and Albert and Queen’s Square and Mesopotamia. All of your people pay 6.5 million dollars to the landowner just so within weeks or months they give it to the right-hand man of the Leader of the Opposition for fifty-odd thousand dollars. They’re supposed to bring back that land so that they can give it to the rightful owner, which is the people of Belize, Mr. Speaker,” Hon. Briceño then remarked.

Hon. Faber then rose on a point of order to state that the PM was “completely wrong,” which resulted in a shouting match between the two members of the House. The Prime Minister insisted that he would not yield to Hon. Faber’s point of order and suggested that he wait his turn to speak. The Speaker of the House then proceeded to caution Hon. Faber, who continued to press forward with his point of order. Once given the chance, Hon. Faber stated, “My point of order is that the Prime Minister has gone off the topic. He’s speaking about acquisition. The supplementary speaks about acquisition. The portion of land which the Prime Minister speaks about is not acquisition, you know?”

Faber then stated that the land was actually acquired for distribution to the people of the Collet Division, and was not, in fact, personally owned by Roosevelt Blades.

“…I place on the record here that any lands that is in that portion that the Prime Minister mentioned just now is not for Patrick Faber, is not for Roosevelt Blades, but is for the people of the Collet Division; the people of the Collet constituency deserve land as well. You are looking at me as you are not cognizant of what I am talking about and you could argue with the process, and I place it on the record here, because the record will bear me out when the distribution of those lands take place. Those lands do not belong to any private entity and will be the property of the people and we sub-divide it for the people of the Collet constituency,” Faber said.

The shouting match then recommenced between the two leaders, during which Hon. Briceño said, “When I was the Minister of Natural Resources in the nine years that I was there, we paid – during my time — less than thirty million dollars in nine years. Right here now in this one year, we have to pay twenty-four million dollars, why? Because the previous government signed contracts with these people that they will be paid. And if we don’t pay them, they are checking us. They’re telling us they’ll take us to court. And there’s a contract, so we will have to pay it. We don’t want to pay it. But we have to because they signed contracts with these people. And part of that acquisition was land in Belama Phase Five where we are paying the landowner six point five million dollars. And most of that land, if not all of that land, went to Roosevelt Blades, and he paid the government a little over fifty thousand dollars. Why are you upset over that? It’s the truth?”

Hon. Briceño then vowed that the land would be distributed to residents of the Freetown constituency. He said, “12 days before the election they came up with the scheme knowing that they were going to lose, knowing that they are not going to get the actual titles on their hands, so they hurry send the money for 50 plus thousand dollars. Knowing that once they lose the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Natural Resources in his good conscience cannot issue out these titles. The member from Freetown who has punished for the past 13 years under the UDP could not give a single person, family, voter in Freetown a single piece of land in the past 13 years. They knew that once we get into government, we were going to stop this hustle… They knew that the representative for Freetown was going to say hell no, we have to help the people of Freetown, they deserve the land, so they quickly pay $50,000 so that they will go to court and they will attempt to get 5 million dollars on the back of the Belizean people. Well, I can tell you right now we are going to take back that land and we are going to give it to the people of Freetown that deserves that land and I will put on record right now that a People’s United Party will not pay a single dollar in compensation to these people, because it’s a scam. That’s how they steal the money from the people and we are going to ask for an audit of the Lands Department for compensation since 2008 to 2020 and we are going to see how they scam the people of this country.”

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