?On the matter of serving on the committee,? Roches told his peers, ?I received a call?a telephone call?just a while ago, and, like I said, I was prepared to go ahead until I get further notice from [Opposition] headquarters, and I?m just being told now that we will not support it unless there is an independent commission??

?The only comment I have to say to you is, you are part of the committee; it is open for you to attend, because the motion has already been passed?? Hon. Philip Zuniga, president of the Senate told Hon. Roches, who asked that his name be withdrawn from the Special Select Committee until further notice.

Apart from Senator Roches, the others appointed to the committee are: Hon. Dickie Bradley for the People?s United Party; Rev. Hon. Moises Chan for the Belize Council of Churches and the Evangelical Association of Churches; Hon. Godwin Hulse for the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Belize Business Bureau; and Hon. Rene Gomez for the National Trade Union Congress of Belize and civil society.

According to Bradley, the Senators unanimously agreed that Hulse should chair the committee.

This evening, after the proceedings concluded, we contacted Opposition Leader, Hon. Dean Barrow, for an explanation of what had transpired with Hon. Roches in the Senate.

He explained to us that his party?s Central Executive Committee had voted unanimously on Tuesday night not to participate in the Senate hearing.

?All our Senators should accept and heed the party line?? Barrow told us.

Opposition Senators Ambrose Tillett and Marcel Cardona were absent from today?s sitting and Barrow said that Tillett had experienced some vehicle problems, while Cardona had an emergency matter to handle elsewhere.

The Opposition had publicly opposed the Senate hearings, and had called for a Commission of Inquiry instead. Barrow had told us on Monday that holding a Commission of Inquiry would enable the social partners?the trade unions and business sector organizations?to propose whom they want on the investigative team and their choices would not be limited to the 12 Senators.

Barrow had argued that holding a Commission of Inquiry?defined under Chapter 27 of the Laws of Belize?would enable the engagement of a ?forensic accountant??an accountant that could ?dig deep? into the figures?to probe into the issues at hand.

After studying the Commission of Inquiry Act, we asked Barrow whether the very nature of the Commission of Inquiry would not, in fact, compromise the investigations, since, under the law, it is the Prime Minister who would be in control of the process?who would appoint the commissioners, give them their terms of reference, and receive the final report of the Commission of Inquiry. At the same time, it was the Prime Minister who had been in charge of Social Security for the period that would be under review, and who is today the Minister in charge of Social Security, as a fellow Minister of Government informed us today.

Barrow disagreed that the Commission of Inquiry would be compromised. He said that the social partners could have laid out to the Prime Minister whom they wanted to serve on the Commission, and what the scope of their work would be.

Today, however, the social partners went the way of the Senate inquiry. The hearings are to be public. In order for any meeting to proceed, at least three Senators, two of them from among the social partners, must be present.

Speaking with Amandala on Tuesday, September 14, Senator Godwin Hulse had told us that, ?If you have institutions with mandates to do certain things, we should make them work.?

He said this is the first time that the Senate would be conducting such hearings.

?At the end, if the public knows what happened, we are a long way down the road. Information and knowledge are worth the process?then we can take other steps?? Hulse commented.

While there has been much debate over which way is the better way to go?the Senate hearings or the Commission of Inquiry?a prominent and learned attorney we spoke with this evening told us that after reviewing the relevant legislation, we could have gone either route. The only reservation was due to the personalities?whether the people who would carry out the inquiry would be truly independent of political control from either the ruling or Opposition parties.

(We?ll have more on this story in our next Sunday?s edition.)