On Monday afternoon, April 30, the People’s United Party’s top brass were called out to Independence Hall to stem what had been brewing to become the worst political crisis of the Said Musa administration, spawned by a controversial guarantee to the Belize Bank for Universal Health Services (UHS) which could leave taxpayers $33 million poorer.
Last Friday, April 27, the UHS guarantee shifted from being a national issue to one of strong political overtones, when the Leader of the UDP Opposition, Hon. Dean Barrow, called on the Prime Minister, Hon. Said Musa, to resign, because some Cabinet members had come out in strong opposition to the guarantee, and furthermore declaring that they were not consulted when the Prime Minister penned the document. Musa’s own Deputy Prime Minister, Hon. Johnny Briceño, gave a statement to his television station in Orange Walk, declaring not only that he did not know of the guarantee, but he does not support it. With rising internal dissent over the matter—in the absence of the Prime Minister, now away in Taiwan—his loyalists stepped in to save the day and kill the internal dissent on this intensely debated issue.
On Monday they called a meeting of the PUP’s parliamentary caucus, made up of about 40 people, including members of National Assembly and standard bearers whose political stakes in the matter are also high, since their success in the next general elections depends very much on the current political climate.
The group passed a five-point resolution, which was first aimed at rejecting Barrow’s call for Musa’s resignation, and furthermore, asserting full confidence in the Prime Minister’s leadership, saying that the Prime Minister has acted lawfully in settling the Belize Bank-UHS debt. The resolution also states that the Prime Minister and a team of select people from his Cabinet would negotiate with the Belize Bank to see how they could renegotiate the debt. Finally, it throws one at “the media,” accusing them of trying to create division in the party by asking individuals to state their position on the guarantee.
The intended result is that those individual opinions are, for the most part, being silenced by a “party position,” declared to some persons in the media on Monday.
The PUP’s Secretary General, Henry Usher, gave a briefing to the press following the caucus meeting. Amandala was not informed of the briefing, and even though we have requested a written copy of the resolutions passed at that meeting today, we had not received it at the time of this writing. So what is contained in this article is what we extracted from transcripts we obtained from both Channels 5 and 7’s websites.
The resolutions are as follows:
1. We reject the Leader of the Opposition calling on the Prime Minister to resign.
2. The Prime Minister acted lawfully at all times in settling this debt and in agreeing in the Cabinet that the debt should be settled.
3. At a meeting of the Public Finance Committee, a subcommittee was created by the Prime Minster to deal with this matter. The parliamentary caucus supports a renegotiation of the Universal debt and the renegotiation of the entire process.
4. We reject utterly the media’s attempt to try to divide the party by singling out ministers to make individual statements on this matter…we are approaching it from a party position, a party statement, and this is the party statement.
5. We are in full support of the Prime Minister, full support of our party leader, the Rt. Hon. Said Musa…we are calling for a national convention in June of this year.
Today, the Opposition United Democratic Party responded to the PUP declarations via a press release, saying that this latest action of the PUP has only worsened the crisis over the guarantee.
It asserted that the parliamentary caucus saying that it supports the Prime Minister, but not the guarantee dated December 9, 2004, confuses things, and that the attempt to renegotiate the guarantee makes it clear that the terms are unacceptable to the parliamentary caucus.
The PUP’s statement also confirms that Cabinet only learned of the guarantee recently, and not when the Prime Minister signed it, the UDP release added.
It goes on to amplify Barrow’s call last Friday for the Prime Minister to resign:
“All this makes the UDP’s point. The Prime Minister’s signing of the guarantee without the approval or knowledge of Cabinet, requires under our constitutional conventions that he resign. And the fact that even now, notwithstanding their desperation to do damage control, the PUP parliamentary caucus still cannot support the guarantee as signed by the Prime Minister, strengthens the case for his resignation.”
The release also points out the apparent shift in some Ministers’ position on the guarantee, and specifically three, including DPM Briceño, who, according to the UDP release, have reneged after speaking out against it.
While the media has sought comment from individuals on the guarantee, members of the National Assembly may be called, again, to publicly state whether they support it or not.
The UDP points out that when the guarantee goes to the National Assembly, they “…will either vote for it and be condemned by public opinion and history as the worst of moral and political frauds; or vote against it and be compelled themselves to resign because they cannot stand with a Prime Minister that has betrayed both them and the nation.”
But it appears that the PUP will try to fend off any move that could lead to such a critical and tense moment.
Usher told the media on Monday that the Prime Minister would be taking legal advice to indicate to him whether he needs to take the guarantee to the House. But what Musa has publicly promised is that whenever the Government strikes accord with the bank over how the debt is to be settled, it would be taken to the National Assembly before the final settlement is made.
If the Opposition calls for a “division” in the National Assembly, then individual area representatives from both sides of the House will have to state whether they vote for or against the proposed settlement.
Usher told the media Monday that if the matter were to be taken to the House, he is confident that a “vast majority” of the PUP parliamentarians would support the guarantee.
Currently, Government officials are silent on what the new terms of settlement are, and Usher told Channel 7 News at the briefing on Monday that no settlement deed exists, as had been reported.
We note that recently Government officials told the media that the last negotiations fell through because the Belize Bank wanted more than the 8,000 acres of land the Government was willing to surrender. It would then seem quite a challenge for the Government to now go to the bank and say, “…we don’t owe you the entire $33 million you are claiming” and ask the bank to reduce that figure.
We understand that the Government will negotiate a discount on the interest portion, which they say amounts to 55% of the loan.
Similarly, Government recently announced that it had written down a $12 million Development Finance Corporation (DFC) loan for UHS to $4 million, claiming that the extra $8 million was pure interest, but the Opposition challenges this explanation for the write-down of the debt.