by Colin Hyde
We can say that the PSU under the leadership of Brother Dean Flowers has been on a crusade to see Sister Dorothy Flowers Bradley retired from the post of Auditor General; one, because she is past retirement age, and two, because she, the PSU president says, isn’t competent.
Looking at this retirement age matter, I expect, hope the PSU realizes that if you’re a hundred years old and you are the top talent, law or no law – youth should give way. The UDP has a collage of Mrs. Rosanna’s explanations for the PM’s sometimes errant speech, but the man said what had to be said when he said we don’t have talent to burn.
The US has a talent pool of 300 million to choose from, and they are yet to produce a footballer that I will pay to watch. I give them points for work ethic, perseverance, little for their art. Belizeans, our talent pool is only 400,000. Of course, if the PM wasn’t sincere, if he was about finding an angle to boost favorites (there are few things worse than favoritism), he deserved to be greeted with suspicion. Bah, it is true, well, most believe, that on occasion successive governments have utterly abused the “rehirement program”, and brought back old party faithful just to give them fat plums.
Whoa there, give way for exceptional talent. Does any society retire a Mista Peetaz from Boom an Chime, a Paul Nabor from Paranda because they’re up in years? Does Belize send a great math teacher out to pasture because they reach the age of 55?
This matter of the lady’s competence, I am completely blank there. If the present Auditor General has no teeth, it might be that she lost it after her 2011-13 Auditor General’s Report hit the fan. We know the UDP utterly savaged her for that. That report claimed/exposed major hanky panky in matters related to our passports, visas, and nationality. Yes, it could be that after being skewered by the government (UDP) Ms. Dorothy chose to step lightly. She should have been a superstar, might have been if she had received the backing she deserved for her efforts then.
Did Mrs. Bradley become a hero to the PUP for that 2011-2013 Auditor General’s report? It’s possible the PUP plan was to roll over her contract again, but have shied away from that, been preempted by the PSU, which has expressed serious dissatisfaction with the performance of the office.
Hmm, if we get up close we might cut the UDP some slack for their agony. Much of the trouble stemmed from the passport-for-sale program that they initiated in their 1984-1989 government. The UDP charged that a subsequent government (PUP) corrupted the program, failed to properly account for the funds. The people clamored for the program to be shut down, and some years later officially it was. But the underground says passport sales were too lucrative, and the business never stopped.
They say it is better to be lucky than good. In this instance, the UDP wasn’t, lucky. It was a bone in their throat that it was the rotten PUP that ran amok with the program, and sakraz, it was saintly they, their people who were hauled squealing like hogs before the Senate, for their share of misdeeds, which they thought minor in comparison to what the PUP rapscallions did.
Mrs. Bradley hasn’t mounted a public defense. We know that for various reasons some charges are hard to defend, and some, agh, you are not allowed to. If the PUP thinks she’s great, they daren’t gush about her, because it will appear that she is favored. The vicious UDP response to that 2011-2013 Auditor General’s Report is in the archives. Now the PSU has the lady in the crosshairs.
Of course it’s Erwin
Anyone who feels that they will find saints in government must be daydreaming about life in the hereafter. Even when they are right, they are wrong. The moment a leader has to make a decision, there’s a percentage of people who will wonder why they weren’t the ones who were favored. If the ones who weren’t favored are half-cynical, they will start thinking all kinds of things, most of those thoughts not very good.
Re: this Portico matter, Eamon said it’s Erwin, and I sign on that page. Let’s go step by step here, and by the time we reach the porch I assure you you’ll agree that the Verdes striker is our man. We begin under a UDP government. Stake Bank’s Port Coral got the go ahead, without exclusivity. Former AG Mike Peyrefitte said they had reasonable expectation that government would help them protect their and their investors’ money. Stake Bank, besides being spearheaded by a Belizean, hit a soft spot because it committed to embracing small local entrepreneurs in the cruise industry.
Shortly after Stake Bank got the go ahead, the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Port Magical Belize, aka Portico. The MoU was no guarantee, but Portico and its backers had to have had reasonable expectation that the government would give a fair look at their project, which they believed was a good one. Just prior to the general election, the minister responsible for these kinds of projects, Erwin, who had signed for Harvest Caye and Stake Bank, signed a Definitive Agreement (DA) with Portico.
A new government came in, and certain operatives, the PM apparently being one, and almost definitely one of his unelected finance ministers, Chris Coye, being one, drooled at what they saw in Portico. In 2021 the project gets environmental approval from the Department of the Environment. Stake Bank cries that a second cruise port near Belize City isn’t feasible.
Now, at least one operative in government thinks the Erwin DA is too sweet, gives away too much to Portico. There is also suspicion that the DA might not be binding, because former ministers in the UDP government say Erwin wasn’t given the license to sign it. Somewhere in the mix here the present government gets two lawyers to look at the DA, one reportedly saying it’s not sound, one saying that he can’t condemn it.
For those with short memories – not for those who have investments of various sorts in Portico being blocked – in the past Belize has gotten walloped at the CCJ after getting favorable judgments locally. Apparently, instead of doing a new DA, the government ministers who liked Portico and the $400million foreign investment it would bring, used the Erwin DA to make a presentation to Cabinet. They could have drawn up their own DA and tried to get it through. But, ehm, you know there’s a lot of waste if we don’t make haste; hence the love for Erwin.
We don’t know if it’s crooks galore in the House of Representatives. We KNOW that when the Portico deal reached Cabinet, somebody broke confidence, and Waterloo, a third cruise port project that was suffering from jealousy after their ambitions had been extinguished, opened the checkbook and flooded the air at news time with accusations of perfidy.
Was there larceny on the minds of the PM and his colega Mister Chris? Enquiring minds will enquire. Enquiring minds will enquire about lots of things, and those who believe we are as animal as we were when we were transferred from our mother’s womb to the cradle, will run the gamut of unsavory doings.
The misguided Senate Enquiry followed. If Cabinet had agreed with the Portico deal reportedly prepared by Chris Coye, the Senate would have had something to bite on with this crowd in office. Presently, all the Senate has is a DA signed by Erwin which his colleagues, the very ones who got banged at the CCJ, say is illegal.
To date, Erwin has not appeared before the Senate. The story I have is that he didn’t show up when he was called. I don’t know if when Erwin signed the DA his mind was in a body that belongs in an orange jublung. Closing out here, I appreciate the promises of Stake Bank, but I have said that of the three cruise port proposals near Belize City, far and away the least concerning in respect to our sea and reef system is Portico. I am yet to hear a professional environmentalist say otherwise.