There is no responsibility whatsoever which lies with any of the educational institutions supposedly attended by the recipients of the vouchers. To mention the University of Belize as the institution whose students were most often named as being recipients of the vouchers, without explaining that the board and administration of UB had absolutely nothing to do with the irregularities inside the Ministry of Education, amounts to the casting of unfair and unjustified aspersions. Channel 7 said on Wednesday evening, ?At the University of Belize, where the bulk of the irregularities occurred ?? The fact is that no irregularities occurred at the University of Belize.

The University of Belize had just been established, in August of the year 2000, and there was a great excitement amongst Belizeans, including housewives and middle-aged citizens, at the opportunity to get a university degree at subsidized tuition rates. Many people were seeking assistance from the Ministry of Education in order to pursue Associate?s, Bachelor?s, and Master?s degrees at the University of Belize.

The volume of traffic may have created the opportunity for the dishonesty and abuse at MOE, which the Opposition United Democratic Party made the centerpiece of their unsuccessful 2003 general election campaign in the last two weeks before election day, March 5, 2003. The highlighting of the MOE voucher scandal featured UDP press conferences broadcast and televised from the Radisson Fort George, open confessions by one memorable young lady who had been receiving vouchers and money, and dramatic indictments by the Honourable Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Dean O. Barrow.

There were much larger financial problems into which the Government of Belize had gotten itself ? the $40 million dredging of the Port of Belize; the $30 million loan to Novelo?s; the $80 million loans and guarantees to Intelco involving the Development Finance Corporation and the Social Security Board; the $40 million houses at Mahogany Heights, and so on, but it was the $666,192 problem at the Ministry of Education on which the UDP, at crunch time in 2003, shone all its lights. Interesting.

The purpose of this editorial is to separate politics and reputation. The publisher of this newspaper was chairman of the board of trustees of the University of Belize during the 2001/2002 period in question. We repeat, the board and administration of UB had absolutely nothing to do with the financial irregularities within a section of the Ministry of Education. In fact, during much of that period in question, from the end of 2001 to the end of 2002, the chairman of the UB board was making every effort to have the chartered public accountant, Cedric Flowers, clean up and streamline the financial business of the university, which was an amalgamation in August 2000 of five different institutions with five different administrations. These efforts are documented in the minutes of UB board meetings for the relevant period.