At Friday’s House meeting—the first since Prime Minister Dean Barrow declared a recession six weeks ago and the final one slated for 2009—former Prime Minister Said Musa, the People’s United Party area representative for Fort George, unleashed a relentless invective on the Barrow administration over the current state of affairs, and even though his comments ranged from the crime situation, to pump prices, to the public sector investment program, to the deaths of noted Belizeans in the struggle for social justice and to the telecommunications debacle, he argued that it was all connected to the ongoing recession, which rages globally and has hit home in several key sectors.
In responding to Musa’s comments, Barrow told the House, “…he [Musa] went around the mulberry bush and I am going to follow him and flog him.”
Musa was the first to speak on adjournment of the House of Representatives, and he minced no words in taking on the Barrow administration over raging recession, and particularly the economy and public finances—an interesting exchange, because this was the single area for which the Musa administration faced the greatest heat while he was Prime Minister, even from his own Cabinet ministers, who rebelled under the banner of the G-7 back in 2004.
While the exchange focused largely on these money matters, there were also exchanges over a mutual political bankroller of the ruling party, the United Democratic Party, and the Opposition People’s United Party – Michael Ashcroft.
“[Musa] can’t have any sense to again get up and actually bring in to his presentation the situation with Michael Ashcroft,” Barrow responded to Musa.
“You talk about my trying to tell a potential Prime Minister in the UK what to do. Well, that’s not true, but when you say that sort of thing, I want to ask why it is that you allowed Ashcroft, when you were Prime Minister, to tell you what to do?”
Referring to a recent interview with the British press, Barrow said, “They asked me whether I was present at a Belize Bank Christmas party when an assembled gathering was transfixed by the sight of Ashcroft having jacked you [Musa] up against a wall, pointing in your face, lecturing you, and then you were standing there with a silly grin on your face.
“You are talking about the litigation we are in; we are in litigation because I am—and this government have proven to the Belizean people and we are completely supported, as far as I can see, that unlike you, we are prepared to stand up to anyone.”
While that exchange added some humor to the theatrics at the close of Friday’s otherwise uneventful meeting, the legislators faced off over the more substantive issue of the looming recession.
At a press conference on Thursday, October 29, Prime Minister Dean Barrow declared that the country was in a recession—a point on which the Opposition has taken on the current administration over what they say is the lack of solutions to bring Belizeans through the economic storm.
“What is the government doing to cushion the blows that people are feeling?” the deposed Prime Minister, Musa, told the current head of Central Government, Barrow.
“On top of everything else, hundreds of Belizeans are losing their homes and their properties to the banks and DFC foreclosures,” said Musa. “People are experiencing misery like we’ve never known.
“The Prime Minister says there is not much his government can do—it is a global recession. I want to say to the Hon. Prime Minister, yes, the problem may be global but the solution has to be local.”
“The economy had slowed down—not only slowed down, but has stopped growing and, in fact, has been contracting,” said Musa, suggesting that Barrow was late in declaring the recession.
“Is it not absolutely the height of hypocrisy for that man, that member of this House, to talk about DFC and foreclosures on mortgages? These are foreclosures that are in consequence of the old DFC debt that he presided over,” said Prime Minister Barrow. “You know hypocrisy, immorality or amorality is one thing, but incompetence is quite another.”
When the Opposition challenged Barrow about his language in the National Assembly, he replied that he was choosing his words very carefully.
“There is nothing unparliamentary about this! That he has displayed a level of ignorance and incompetence with respect to the whole question of economics…and I am not an economist but that I find it absolutely astounding given that he was the Minister of Finance for so long. I could not have acknowledged a recession until a recession occurred,” he said.
“There is a definition of [a] recession,” Barrow replied. “There has to be two quarters of negative contraction before there is a recession. You didn’t know that? All the years you were there [as Minister of Finance], you learned nothing except how to make off with the people’s money? You’re a fraud and incompetent man,” he told Musa.
Prime Minister Barrow noted that Belize’s debt burden, even with the refinancing through the 2007 super-bond, continues to be the highest, compared to the Gross Domestic Product in the entire Caribbean region.
“He blames some of our economic woes on the so-called super-bond, because, as he says, the interest rate will go up from 4.25% to 6% next year. But we’re in the recession now, not next year. (Hopefully not next year),” Musa commented.
Even though he indicated that his administration, by restructuring the bulk of the country’s commercial debt, had provided “cash flow relief to government between 2007 and 2015” to the tune of US$481 million, Musa did not say that the country will have to find over $200 million each year between 2019 and 2029 to pay off the debt, this on top of step-up interest payments growing from $55 million this year to $65 million next year and $92 million in 2012.
According to information published by the Barrow administration, under the terms of the restructuring, Belize will pay $3 billion for under $1 billion in debt—roughly triple the restructured debt.
Barrow told Musa in Friday’s House meeting that the effect of the transaction was “….saddling this country with a crippling indebtedness,” and then, Barrow told Musa, “he has the nerve to say they provided the country with relief.”
Taking a stab at Barrow over “the so-called stimulus package” to ease the effects of the global recession on Belize, Musa said that even though the budget year is nearing its end, the Barrow administration has yet to implement key areas of the $200 million stimulus package, introduced at a press conference in January 2009.
He called out the Barrow administration on the late start of the $30 million tourism development to be funded by the IDB; the construction of a permanent replacement for the Kendal Bridge, damaged last year in Tropical Storm Arthur; and the solid waste management project.
He also pointed to the fact that even though Barrow had promised to return to the House with adjustments to the $1 gas tax imposed in April, at the start of the budget year, he has not done so, even though diesel is well over the $6 benchmark he promised would trigger a review of the tax.
“How can he claim to have a heart in terms of people in this country suffering, when he had to stand up in court for the $20 million from Venezuela that again he diverted?… You were charged, you diverted the $20 million from the government, so don’t get up here and talk as though you have any kind of feeling for poor people,” Barrow told Musa.
Barrow went on to say that, “…even the Arbitration Tribunal in the UK pointed the fingers at you, indicting you for having engaged in a conspiracy to subvert the laws of this country, in particular the Finance and Audit (Reform) Act…”
“I was exonerated in the court,” Musa retorted, “…when you think of the blood that has been spilt and the stain on this administration; of Mr. Gutierrez, the cañero; of Charlie Good and Mr. Dwain Davis. That is the collective memory that will stick in the minds of people.”
Before closing his invective against the Barrow administration, Musa declared: “…I say to this government, I say to all of you, one term. This is a one-term government.”
“This government knows that it will bring this country through the recession and I am telling you that by the time the next election rolls around, when that comes around, we will be rolling around and we will roll right over you and your colleagues,” said Barrow.
“Well, I have to employ Mister Scrooge’s epithet, but I have to add some of my own. What a fraud and a hypocrite and a humbug, the member for Fort George is!” Barrow added.
The spirited condemnation Musa unleashed on Barrow’s administration contrasts sharply with the cordial exchange the two had inside the National Assembly before the meeting commenced Friday morning.
In spite of the offenses flung back and forth on adjournment, representatives from both sides of the floor took the time to convey their Christmas greetings to each other and the public, on closing the last planned House meeting for 2009, going into the Christmas holidays.