BELIZE CITY, Mon. Dec. 6, 2021– In what some consider to be an about turn, the PUP selected Kareem Michael, a man some senior members of the ruling party consider to be of UDP stock, to take up the critical post of Governor of the Central Bank of Belize. The post had been vacant since mid-August, and PM Briceño last week told reporters that his government searched “high and low” to find “the most appropriate person to lead the Central Bank.” Some of the persons in Belize that the government considered for the post were retired, and the search extended beyond national borders and was carried out “even in the region”, before the decision was made to appoint Michael, the Prime Minister said.

PM Briceño said some of his colleagues in his administration and within the PUP had expressed concern over his choice of Michael “because they think he comes from a UDP family,” but he said he thought it was more important to look at the gentleman’s qualifications, his sincerity, his “wanting to work at the Central Bank” and his willingness to cooperate “and work in tandem with the government.”

Shortly after the previous governor of the bank, the highly experienced Gustavo Manuel Vasquez, resigned/was fired abruptly, reportedly at the request of the Central Bank Board, after he was at the helm of the bank for just a few months, (following which he received a tidy settlement package), Martin Marshalleck, a member of a prominent PUP family, had resigned from his post at the Belize Bank. Naturally, some expected that the PUP favorite, trained in the Ashcroft banking system, would be the new man at the helm.

The choice of the relatively young Michael comes as a surprise. The government’s newspaper, The Belize Times, in a story entitled, “Things that make you go HMMMM!” published on January, 2020, about 10 months before the then UDP government lost at the polls, had remarked that Michael had gotten a “hell of a sweet deal” from the UDP, when they allowed him to resign from his post as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank to go work as a liquidator of the failed Choice Bank, at $50,000 per month, and rehired him six months later, to his same post at the Central Bank.

Mr. Michael, whom Prime Minister Briceño described as “brilliant”, holds a Master of Public Administration degree in Economics from the prestigious Columbia University in the City of New York. He previously served the Central Bank of Belize as Deputy Governor, in Research, Financial Supervision, and Compliance.