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UDP Leader demands House meeting May 18!

GeneralUDP Leader demands House meeting May 18!
Leader of the Opposition, Hon Dean Barrow, called a press conference at the Radisson Fort George Hotel in Belize City this morning, Friday, to declare that the newly disclosed loan agreement the Prime Minister, Hon. Said Musa, signed with the Belize Bank, was “entered into unilaterally and unlawfully.”
 
Barrow said that Musa committed two extremely grave offenses against the Constitution of Belize and the polity of this country. The first, he says, is having entered into the guarantee and the loan agreement in a patently illegal manner, and the second, according to Barrow, is that Musa lied to everybody to conceal his illegal actions.
 
“This is entirely on the Prime Minister. He did all of this on his own… He is obliged as a matter of duty to resign,” he declared.
 
Up until a few days ago, the public debate has been over an open-ended guarantee which Musa signed with the bank to cover an unlimited amount of debt for Universal Health Services (UHS). Since last December, the Government has been talking about taking over the Universal hospital in exchange for settling its debt. We point out that despite the purported loan agreement, which the bank says was signed on March 23, 2007, in settlement of the UHS debt to the bank, the hospital continues to be a private entity.
 
Barrow’s underlying point is that the Prime Minister was not legally authorized to make the Belize Bank loan.
 
“It is unarguable that this newly revealed secret loan note is expressly caught by the new Finance and Audit (Reform) Act. That loan arrangement would only have been entered, that loan note could have only been lawfully signed by the Prime Minister pursuant to a resolution of the National Assembly authorizing Government to enter into those formal arrangements,” said Barrow.
 
Under law, any loan of $10 million or greater requires National Assembly approval, and the last reported value of the loan was $33 million. However, in its demand letter sent to Musa on Tuesday, the bank’s chairman, Philip Johnson, made it clear that the meter continues to run on that debt at a rate of 17% per annum.
 
Barrow recounted that on Monday, April 30, the People’s United Party issued what he called the Independence Hall Resolution, released after the party’s parliamentary caucus and other party officials met.
 
“According to the PUP release, there was a meeting of the Public Finance Committee on the 23rd of April, and then it was that the Prime Minister proposed to the members of the Public Finance Committee – Ministers of Government, also members of Cabinet – that a smaller group, that a subgroup of the Public Finance Committee, be appointed for the purpose of agreeing to a strategy for the renegotiation of the UHS debt.
 
“It now turns out, ladies and gentlemen, based on the demand letter, that on that very day when the Prime Minister was leading his ministers down the primrose path, and feeding them this mumbo jumbo about renegotiating the UHS debt, he had unbeknownst to them, as early as the 23rd March, converted the debt into a loan with fixed terms and conditions, under which, on that very day which he was telling them that they should form themselves into a smaller committee, to go an renegotiate the debt, on that very day, the first interest payment under the new loan that he had crystallized in secret was falling due.
 
“If you stop and think about it, the Prime Minister is guilty, ladies and gentlemen, of serial lies – lies to the Cabinet, lies to the Public Finance Committee, lies to the nation, in fact, as it turns out, lies to his own son, because his son, Henry Charles Usher, is the secretary general of the People’s United Party. And after they released their resolutions on the Independence Hall Meeting on the 30 April, as we saw last night, an interview was given by this Henry Charles – son of the Prime Minister, Secretary General of the PUP – to Channel 7, and he flatly denied that there was any settlement deed, much less loan agreement that the Prime Minister had entered into. So the man lies to his own son, hangs him out to dry, sacrifices him publicly upon this alter of fraud… It does demonstrate the lengths to which Said Wilbert Musa is prepared to go.”
 
Barrow outlined a number of calls the UDP is making:
 
The first is the renewal of their call for the Prime Minister to resign, on the grounds that he has violated Section 7(2) of the Finance and Audit Act, and “…has lied both by omission and commission to the Cabinet, the Public Finance Committee, to the citizens of this nation… If this were the United States he would have been impeached. Remember Watergate,” Barrow said.
 
The second call is for the immediate disclosure to the UDP and the general public of both the loan note, and the deed of settlement that bank said were signed together on March 23, as well as “any other document in any way connected to UHS debt.”
 
Barrow commented that, “We cannot afford as a people to continue to lurch around in the dark, with this veil over our eyes, deliberately placed there by our leaders. We need to know the comprehensive and complete fashion, all the facts involved in this issue, which means that we must see the loan note.”
 
He also said that he would immediately write the Acting Prime Minister, Hon. Johnny Briceño, a letter he will copy to Financial Secretary, Dr. Carla Barnett, demanding immediate release of the documents, and if his request is denied, the UDP will go to court to force the release of the documents.
 
The third call goes to ministers of Cabinet and in particular, members of the Public Finance Committee. Barrow said that they should also demand to see the documents in question, and state their position on this latest development for all the nation to see. He added that it is their responsibility as elected officials to get all the facts.
 
The fourth call was on the public officers in the Ministry of Finance, and in particular Financial Secretary, Dr. Carla Barnett, not to pay any monies towards the debt.
 
“This is no longer a political controversy, if it ever was. It is a constitutional crisis. It is a matter now of a loan agreement that is patently in violation of the laws in this country; it is a matter of a loan agreement that is invalid and illegal,” Barrow asserted, adding that public officers cannot have any recourse in the Nuremberg defense – that they were only following the orders of their superiors, and are therefore not responsible for their actions.
 
Apart from seeking the release of the still secret documents, Barrow said that he would be requesting a House meeting for May 18, the first Friday after the 6-week recess of the House ends. At that meeting, he plans to put forward two motions, one to call on the House to reject the guarantee, and the other to reject the settlement deed. He expects that Opposition Senators or independent senators will do the same, to request a meeting of the Senate on the following Monday, May 21.
 
Barrow concedes that even though the law permits members of the National Assembly to request meetings, the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate do have the discretion to decide when they will be held. If their requests for meetings are not heeded, Barrow said, the UDP would take to the streets in protest.

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