Headline

The Commission of Inquiry into the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) said it was hit with a major setback today because two key witnesses who were summoned to testify, failed to show up.

The Chief Justice, Dr. Abdulai Conteh, today heard a suit for libel brought by the Prime Minister, Hon. Said Musa, against the Reporter newspaper and its publisher, Harry Lawrence, for an editorial that was published in the Reporter dated October 2, 2005.

Unless there is some massive intervention over the course of the next 9 days, the contentions behind the walls of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH) and the Belize Telecommunications Limited (BTL) will spill over into the streets of Belize City, and possibly other parts of the country, in a protest march on Saturday, February 17.

The Commission of Inquiry into the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) began to net some big fish in its hearing today, and with its many searching questions was able to catch one big fish by the mouth.

Two aunts who had left a Forest Home church for a brief moment to take their baby nephew home to get a bottle of formula were met with tragedy on their return, after Hon. Marcial Mes, Toledo West area representative and Minister of State in the Ministry of National Development, reportedly lost control of his official vehicle and slammed violently into the toddler and one of the two aunts, seriously injuring both. Relatives and area residents suspect that the Minister was driving under the influence of alcohol, but last night Mes refused to allow police to test him.

Coming off a three-month suspension of public hearings, the DFC Commission of Inquiry today called three people to provide public testimony as they continue to probe into the finances of the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), particularly to unravel the complexities of a questionable $50 million loan the DFC got from the Belize Bank, and two cheques valued together at $28 million for a loan DFC made to the Novelo family to buy out other major transportation providers.

At press time this evening there was still an impasse between the PUP Government of Belize and the UDP Opposition-controlled Belize City Council over the payment of over $300,000 from the cruise tourist head tax to the Belize City Council, and all indications are that the Council and the Opposition are mustering national support to pressure Government into paying the Council what it had promised.

It is rare for young people who have been abused within the school system by teachers or administrators—forcing them to give sexual favors to get good grades or access to tests and answers—to come forward and tell their story. It is also rare for other co-workers who know of this type of injustice to step up and expose it. This is an extremely sensitive matter, and a matter that some refuse to address publicly because they fear losing their jobs and, in the most extreme cases, their lives.

The battle lines were already drawn across the pothole-stricken streets of Belize City and the forces positioned to war for a US$1 cut of the cruise tourist head tax for the City—money that the Belize City Council argues is needed to finance important City operations, the most prominent being the repair of the old capital’s horribly degraded streets.

Belize Ports Limited (BPL) chief executive Luke Espat gave interviews to both Channel 5’s Stewart Krohn and Channel 7’s Jules Vasquez this evening. Lucas was responding to a Godfrey Smith column in the issue of THE BELIZE TIMES published earlier today, a column which blew the whistle on a problem between BPL and the cruise shipping giant, Carnival, a problem which the Hon. Minister of Tourism (the said Smith) described as a “schism” which “appears to be irreconcilable.”