Prime Minister Said Musa has received a 93-page report unilaterally submitted by Justice Herbert Lord last Thursday, July 12, completely without the input of Merlene Bailey-Martinez, his co-chair on the Commission of Inquiry into the Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
“I have no idea if he has submitted a final report. How can he do so without my knowledge or acquiescence?” Commissioner Bailey-Martinez reasoned.
On Wednesday, July 11, Bailey-Martinez received a letter from Lord telling her that he would file his own report. She wrote back on the same day, begging him to hold off so they could hear from three more key witnesses, but by the close of the following day, Lord had submitted an extensive document to the Prime Minister’s office, indicating that the document was already in the works even while his co-chair was reading his warning letter.
When the letter arrived at the P.M. Musa’s office last Thursday, he was on the first leg of his national pre-election tour in the South, but when he returned to his Belmopan office this morning, the report was handed to him, Cabinet Secretary, Robert Leslie informed us today.
Leslie said that all indications are that Lord’s report is intended to be a final report, though he expects that a second report will be coming later from DFC Commission co-chair, Merlene Bailey-Martinez. There will be an official statement from the Prime Minister’s office once he’s done, he added.
As we had reported in the last edition of our newspaper, Lord had threatened to file a separate report, independent of Bailey-Martinez.
Commissioner Bailey-Martinez told us today that Lord’s letter, dated July 3, took her by complete surprise, and she has neither seen nor received a copy of the report Lord has forwarded to the Prime Minister.
In his letter, Lord told Bailey-Martinez that he had repeatedly raised the matter of the Commission’s report with her, but she has not cooperated with him on the matter.
In her defense, Bailey-Martinez told us today that she had gone so far as to propose a format for the Commission’s report to Lord, and urged that they should sit down and start working on putting their report together.
This aside, she noted that the Commission has clearly not completed its work, since there are two major borrowers that the Commission has yet to hear testimonies from – the Novelo brothers (David and Antonio) and Dr. Victor Lizarraga, the principal of Universal Health Services.
According to Commissioner Bailey-Martinez, the Commission (comprised of her and Lord) last met on June 8, and a subsequent meeting for June 15, last Friday, had to be postponed, supposedly because Lord had judicial duties.
That meeting, however, would have been of no use, since Lord had already filed his final report three days prior to that date.
Bailey-Martinez said that she was told that Lord could not meet again until after the end of July, because he would be attending to judicial duties in the South.
Now, her appeal goes out to the Prime Minister, urging him not to accept Lord’s report, so that the two commissioners can come again to the table and work on a joint report.
“I…respectfully submit that you refrain from accepting a submission that has not been jointly prepared as per the terms of reference of the Commission of Inquiry appointed by you. To do so would negate the effort and effect of the Commission,” she elaborates.
At the end of June, Cabinet Secretary Leslie wrote the Commissioners, asking them to submit a report to the Prime Minister, and if they were not ready to submit a final report, they could at least submit a summary of their major findings and recommendations.
On Friday, July 12, Commissioner Bailey-Martinez wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to give her seven days to get back to him, since she would try her best to reconcile things with Lord.
“Mr. Lord fully acknowledges that the outstanding matter delaying the finalizing of the Commission’s report is essentially the pending interviews of the principals of the Novelo group of companies and of Universal Health Services group,” she notes, explaining difficulties the Commission has faced in getting them to appear for in camera hearings.
To Lord, Commissioner Bailey-Martinez wrote a strongly-worded letter on Wednesday, July 11, immediately upon receiving his, noting her shock and objection with the way he was intending to proceed.
“Your unilateral submission could also be construed as a not-so-subtle attempt to derail the work of the commission, in that there would not be one official document which would form the basis for follow-up action by persons with a vested interest and official responsibility to do so,” Commissioner Bailey-Martinez tells Commissioner Lord. “I respectfully request that you reconsider and not go down so dishonorable a path, after all the effort that has gone into the Commission.”
Commissioner Bailey-Martinez told us today that she is absolutely confident that she and Lord can come together and work things out.
“This is neither about me nor him,” she asserted.
It was Prime Minister Musa who commissioned the inquiry over two years ago, but he did so only after intense pressure from the National Trade Union Congress of Belize (NTUCB).
NTUCB president, Rene Gomez, told Amandala today that the union is awaiting the Prime Minister’s reply before they make a public statement on the recent developments with the Commission of Inquiry.
We note that Bailey-Martinez sits on the Commission of Inquiry on behalf of the NTUCB, while Lord sits on the Commission for the Government of Belize.
During the process of the public hearings, Lord was far less involved in the probing of witnesses than former chairman, David Price, now deceased, and his co-chair, Bailey-Martinez, though Lord had stepped up the ante (just a notch) towards the end of those hearings.
It was the very astute David Price and Bailey-Martinez (a businesswoman with a strong accounting background who had, through the hearings, earned the deep respect of the wider public) who had always taken the lead in the investigations of the Commission of Inquiry.
Union officials we have spoken with on the recent developments have expressed grave concern, and have pledged that they will not let anyone throw a wrench in the investigation, because it was the public’s cry that there should be a thorough probe into the hundreds of millions of public monies that were pumped into the DFC before it went broke.