Month: June 2024

And while the business and residential communities in Cayo have expressed their concerns and Area Representative, Orlando Habet has given Cabinet’s assurances for more fighting power. Earlier today, the Prime Minister also gave his word that the government will go after gang members and those who refuse to find employment and terrorize others. He told reporters that once individuals are found guilty of being gang members, there might have to be an amendment to the law to require those people to be imprisoned.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The law is very clear that if you’re a gang member, you can get 10 years. Imprisonment, and if you’re a head of a gang member, you can get as much as 20 years. Unfortunately, for one reason or the other, in San, and I have to be very careful how I say this, for whatever reason, the police department took two gang members to court in San Pedro. They admitted, or they have accepted that they’re guilty, and they were just given a $1,500 fine. And I believe that, that we can’t – that’s a slap on the people of San Pedro, because these people have been – these gangs have been terrorizing the people in San Pedro. So we have said that we are going to go after them. We’re not – we cannot allow a small group of people to terrorize this country, and we’re even talking about maybe even amending the law to ensure that once you’re a gang member and you’re found guilty, that you are going to go to jail.”

 

Reporter

“Doctors are being terrorized by gangsters.”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“That would happen in any place. It happens in the United States. Just yesterday in the United States, they hijacked a public transport bus. So for you to say, it’s a failure because something like that happens in every society – now the failure would be if we refuse to act. If you look at what we’ve been doing over the years, we’ve been strengthening the police department, we’ve been giving them more equipment, we’ve been getting more police. We just agreed to give them another amount of – we just approved some more monies for them to be able to continue to monitor the northern borders to ensure that Kaborga gang or cartel cannot come into Belize. So we are doing. As something comes up, we are acting on it.”

 

Reporter

“There is some type of fundamental failure of 10 days elapses, and you all don’t know anything about this major security breach.”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“How can you act if you don’t know? If your pikni misbehave and nobody tell you, is it a failure of you?”

 

Reporter

“But something is broken in the Ministry of Health then.”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The problem was that these doctors were terrorized by these people and were afraid to speak out, and they finally did. So by the time you got your video, we were already acting. We were already hunting down these two individuals. And also now we’re going after all of those that were outside in the compound, in a threatening manner. We have been acting, and I don’t see how you could hold the minister in charge of the police responsible for something like this. If you have people that do not want to work, and want to terrorize our citizens, then we have to deal with them accordingly.”

The Toledo Alcaldes Association  is dissatisfied with the Attorney General’s decision to remove and replace the alcalde and deputy alcalde in Indian Creek Village in January. Represented by Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith and Leslie Mendez, the T.A.A. has filed an application seeking permission for judicial review and an injunction to prevent the government-appointed alcaldes from performing their duties until the trial concludes.  Meanwhile, the Government of Belize, represented by Senior Counsel Marshalleck, argues that the Inferior Court Act establishes an Alcalde Jurisdiction Court led by government-appointed alcaldes. However, there is no legal recognition for the traditional alcalde system in these villages, although legislation does acknowledge the authority of village councils. This situation has led to a longstanding debate over which authority is supreme in Maya villages. The attorney general followed the village council’s recommendations in the latest appointments, which has not satisfied the T.A.A. News Five’s Paul Lopes reports.

 

Paul Lopez, Reporting

The Toledo Alcaldes Association is taking the Government of Belize to court. In January, the Attorney General removed and appointed an alcalde and deputy alcalde in Indian Creek Village, Toledo District. The T.A.A. filed for permission to bring judicial review proceedings following GOB’s decision. The association asked the court to order that newly appointed alcaldes not proceed with any of their functions until the matter is heard. According to the T.A.A., the decision by the government is a violation of their customary rules and constitutional rights. Christina Coc is the spokesperson for the association.

 

Christina Coc, Spokesperson for Toledo Alcaldes Association

“As the rest of Belize knows, in Toledo all forty-one communities practice a system of traditional governance which has two alcaldes in each village. This is an important system of governance for us. It has sustained our communities since time immemorial and so we think it is really important to protect and safeguard what has really kept our communities.”

 

 

Senior Counsel Andrew Marshalleck is representing the government. It is no secret that the village councils and alcaldes are not always seeing eye to eye in the forty-one communities within the Toledo district. It has been a long-standing issue, but the constitution does not recognise the traditional alcalde system.

 

Andrew Marshalleck, Senior Counsel, Attorney for Government 

“And the issue for the government is whose recommendations do I heed when I am making appointment, whether it is the duly elected village council or whether it is votes from village meetings which is their customary practice.”

 

 

 

 

Paul Lopez

How is that the government can intervene in customary practices such as the alcalde system

 

Andrew Marshalleck

“The Inferior Court Act provides for the government to appoint to preside over the alcalde jurisdiction court, which is a court equivalent of a magistrate’s court. It is the same way it intervenes to appoint your magistrates, who preside over you. It is an exercise of the sovereign rights to govern this territory.”

 

 

The T.A.A. contends that the government cannot appoint alcaldes to the jurisdiction court without recommendations made during village meetings, which is its customary decision-making process. Much like it is with the case of customary land rights, TAA argues that while it may not be recognised by law it is their right to exclusively determine who will fill these positions. Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith is representing the TAA in this matter.

 

Godfrey Smith, Senior Counsel, Attorney for Toledo Alcaldes Association

“And, our response to that is and will be developed that in the same way back when the maya first advocated for customary land tenure, it was not recognized in the laws of Belize, so too we are saying that the right of their village to exclusively determine who will be alcaldes and the right to remove them vest in the village, not by virtue of any written law of the land but by virtue of constitutional interpretation utilizing international treaty obligations and international customary law.”

 

 

Reporter

“Because currently you don’t have an alcalde’s law, once all of that is sorted this is the way you want to go to have the government enact such a law?”

 

 

Godfrey Smith

“Well we are not concerned, I cannot speak for the government. We are concerned with the state of Belize and the court recognizing and protecting the rights of indigenous people to a variety of things. That will evolve overtime clearly. The government has a right to legislate what they want providing it doesn’t infringe, erode or subvert the rights of indigenous people.”

 

 

Marshalleck refers to the challenge as an attack on sovereignty. He explained that the outcome of this case may have varying implications.

 

Andrew Marshalleck Senior Counsel, Attorney for G.O.B. 

“What it is in an assertion of customary rights and a right to what they call internal self-governance. It is going to impact all of us. The state of Belize is all of us and what it is saying is that when we elect representatives and give them the authority to make laws, they will have restrictions in what they can do in these villages.”

 

Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.

Prime Minister John Briceño has also weighed in on the devastating wildfires that are affecting parts of southern and western Belize.  Amid ongoing public discourse, there has been talk that the country should acquire a helicopter to provide aerial support for firefighting.  But, is the P.M. down with purchasing a new chopper for that sole purpose?  And where is the new NEMO minister on a supplementary budget for disaster relief?

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We are working on that and he’s working on a new budget and despite everything, we can‘t let the best be the enemy of the good.  And in this sense, this issue about air support, air support, guys we don‘t even own a helicopter and for us to be able to say we‘re going to own a helicopter to be able to… let’s be real, let’s be realistic.  What we are looking at is how we can organize this whole firefighting forest fires, how we’re going to fight them and it has been from top to bottom.  And of the ideas, I think he is the deputy chair of APAMO and what he was saying is that we need to start from the community level, to start at the community level to give them some sort of training and a little bit of equipment so that in most instances we can contain it.  We also have to look at controlled burning, something that has not been done that you burn your underbrush or your forest not when it is the hottest and we can get rid of some of the debris so that if there is a fire it’s not going to be, it’s not going to be huge and as destructive as what it was.”

Since the murder of businessman Ricardo Borja in 2023, a spotlight has been shone on massive real estate scams taking place across the country.  This afternoon, the Minister of Natural Resources spoke at length on what’s been taking place with private real estate transactions that have resulted in the Government of Belize being cheated out of millions of dollars in revenue.

 

Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources

“It’s scary when you consider that persons have died and quite possibly linked to these things.  You‘re dealing with a different level of opportunism and different level of criminality and a different level of wickedness altogether and I don‘t know that you necessarily can liquidate that, can destroy that in the shortest possible time.  I think it‘s about us trying to get our structures in place where we get it right about trying to have some regulations that will regulate these real estate cats because the truth of the matter is that they‘ve been having a free run at it for the longest time and these guys are so-called land agents and they also pretend to be attorneys and financial experts and all kinds of stuff and they are very clever, very smooth and savvy because they are able to convince very wealthy people to get off their money.  I can tell you that in these cases, we‘ve had to collaborate, cooperate with the police and try to assist as best as we can with these investigations.  We‘ve done our own internal investigation of lots of these accounts. In the Borja case, we‘ve reviewed over three hundred transaction instruments that Borja and his consulting company, I think it‘s J.C. Consulting or something, that they actually presented to the Lands Department.  Eighty percent, damn near eighty percent of those were incomplete.  They triggered some interaction, got an instrument number but they never followed through because they came, they triggered an interaction with the Lands Registry and through that process they are able to get what would be the relevant fees, the relevant duties that have to be paid but they don’t come back.”

According to Deputy Prime Minister Cordel Hyde, whose portfolio includes the Ministry of Natural Resources, government was able to reverse a partially completed transaction that would have seen one individual fraudulently owning two thousand acres of crown land.

 

Cordel Hyde, Deputy Prime Minister

“You had a gentleman who was trying to pull a fast one on the Government of Belize for two thousand acres of land, you know, and we were able to get to the bottom of it and figured out that, you know what, you don‘t have a claim to this land.  This land is still national land, this land is for the people of Belize and so we were able to take that back and subdivide that and now we are in the process of giving hundreds of Belizeans their residential plots and giving hundreds of Belizeans farm plots out of those two thousand acres.  But then you wonder how they are able to pull such a fast one on a lot of unsuspecting people and I think that it’s just a cautionary tale for everyone out here that you really have to guard your money jealously like you have to treat your money like you treat your wife or your husband.  Like you cant afford to get that out of your eyesight easily.  Like you cannot be, you have to be careful and aware of agents and fake agents.  You cannot be engaging and giving your money to people who are so-called public officers or people pretending to be public officers for lands all over the country.  Listen, don’t try to bribe anybody and don’t let anybody bribe you.  You’ve already paid for this service.  Every time you pay taxes, every time we go to the store, we pay taxes and those taxes pay our salaries and so it is our jobs as public officers to provide that service to the public.  Yes, the process takes a little long, the process is frustrating many times, but you gotta work the process and try to stay honest in the process because when you get out of that a whole lot of things go wrong and you end up paying a ton load of money and you never get the property that you think you had, that you think you have a legitimate claim to and you don‘t.  So it‘s for people to really beware.  People have to really guard their money jealously and not be falling for these wicked fellas.”

Yesterday, we reported on an incident at Belize Central Prison involving attorney Leslie Mendez, who was asked to surrender documents for inspection upon entry. Mendez, citing attorney-client privilege, declined to hand over the confidential documents. After a discussion, a compromise was reached between Mendez and the prison security team. Today, we visited the prison to learn what the procedures of that protocol look like. Here’s Michael Gladden, Chief Security Officer at the Belize Central Prison with more information.

 

Michael Gladden, Chief Security Officer, Belize Central Prison

“When it comes to regular visit, after going through the process of finding out who you’re coming to see, then you would go, and that’s the visiting processing area, you would go to the baggage search or for attorneys, if they have any kind of documentation. When it comes to attaches, briefcases, or anything large like that’s not allowed in the prison, right? Being that it would be a lot for our officers to go through. So what we ask is that they bring a manila folder, any kind of writing pad, any kind of documents and things like that and then those items, as well as any visitors, must be perused. And the perusal is, especially when it comes to attorney and clients, it’s pretty much just skimming through it. It’s pretty much taking the document, and I’ll show you in a little while how we go through that procedure. And it’s not reading it, because we know the client privilege is very sensitive. So what it is just perusing and looking through that document, ensuring there’s no contraband within. And this goes for all visitors. And talk to me about how you navigate or avoid the people conducting the searches, stumbling or accidentally reading something that’s confidential. That would be hard to do because it’s not a point of where you actually go and stop and look at each document. It’s basically just flipping through the documents one by one with that person in front of you monitoring what you’re doing.”

 

Britney Gordon

“What exactly are you looking for within papers specifically?”

 

Michael Gladden

“It could be anything. We’ve had instances where we found cash within papers.  That’s not authorized. We have a procedure for that to happen. So we’re looking for cash. We’re looking for any kind of unauthorized item. It could be from anything. It could be from cash. It could be a personal note that’s not authorized. It could be maybe a letter from a family member that we have a procedure for that to go through as well.”

The Northern Fishermen Cooperative is, once again, in a financial crisis, and its members say they have finally had enough. As one of Belize’s largest fisheries cooperatives with around two thousand members, it is responsible to ensure that its members have access to the resources and funds needed to fulfil their duties as fishermen and pay them a fair wage for their goods. So what happens when its members do not get paid? That is what News Five’s Britney Gordon found out today.

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

Members of the Northern Fishermen Cooperative are speaking up against what they describe as ‘mistreatment’ they’ve been receiving for several years.

According to some members, the cooperative has struggled to manage its funds for over a decade. The fishermen who make up the co-op say they’ve borne the brunt of this for the majority of that time. Fisherman Hopeton Westby Jr. who has been a member of the cooperative for the past twenty-eight years shared his grievances to us about the situation.

 

Hopeton Westby Jr, Fisherman

“Well the cooperative have a problem with money. They don’t have money to pay us for a product sometimes. You come in, you have to wait a whole week for your money.  You can’t go back out and so on. Bad shape with financing, the co-op. You can’t get ice when you need the ice. The ice machines are always down. You need ice to take care of your product and you can’t go to the cayes without that. Mismanagement at the co-op is a big problem.”

 

 

 

Westby said that members often resort to borrowing money to survive when they fail to receive payment.

 

Fisherman Harry Hendy is a recent member of the co-op. He says that though his time there has been short, he has experienced the same frustration as his colleagues. Hendy says he is fortunate enough to be in a position where he can still afford to pay his employees.

 

 

 

Harry Hendy, Fisherman

“I’m fortunate enough that when they don’t have money my workers they need their money. So I just try to let them get paid and I wait just until they’re ready, but that’s always be the issue because when guys come in they want their money they work with me. So I got to make sure I get their money for them and I just wait until they’re ready to give me their to pay me. It’s just frustrating sometimes, but like I said, I just try to flow with it because there’s nothing else we could do. We just got to wait for them to do what they’re doing. And that’s all we could do.”

 

Britney Gordon

“Is it like a feeling of helplessness?”

 

Harry Hendy

“Helplessness, like not even appreciative that a member is supposed to feel appreciative. These are one keep the co-op going. So if we’re not feeling appreciative that’s not a good thing. It’s like the communication is not even there.”

 

We also spoke to members of the Belize Federation of Fishermen (B.F.F.) who told us that the concerns of the cooperative’s members are their concerns as well because of the large overlap in membership. B.F.F. Director, Nigel Martinez says that the team has been doing their best to assist the fishermen.

 

Nigel Martinex, Director, B.F.F.

“As of recent, it has gotten extremely worse over the years. So while we continue to see the decline of our products, we’re also seeing a decline in the cooperative structure. And it has been said through a recent report, not so recent that the cooperative system have been unsustainably financially structured. And because of that, we have seen gross mismanagement across the board. And it’s a major concern because as the guys have mentioned, they are unable to get the necessary support and resources that they need in order to go out and fish. The more challenging for them is that some of the incentives for being a member that were in place, example access to social security access to educational support, those things have all failed over time.”

 

Also speaking on the matter was the technical advisor of the B.F.F., George Myvette who referenced a report titled The Financial Performance and Sustainability of the Fishing Cooperatives of Belize by Ramon Alberto Carcamo Jr. In this report, Carcamo outlines the failings of the cooperative’s structure and predicts its eventual collapse.

 

 

 

 

 

George Myvette, Technical Advisor, B.F.F.

“Major work has been done in relation to analyzing the financial and management circumstances of these cooperatives, I am a retired public officer, former senior fisheries officer, and I will tell you that there has always been for a while challenged with the cooperatives generally but certainly with Northern. One of our officers , mister Ramon Carcamo, did a master’s thesis in relation to analysis circumstances in these cooperatives. That thesis was submitted and approved in I believe 2012.  Ans all the way back from 2012, a part of his analysis looked at risk analysis. And what the risk analysis was saying for Northern at the time was that there was an eighty-five percent probability that the cooperative would fold.”

 

Westby explained that the members rarely ever meet with the administration and are given little information as to what happens behind the scenes of the operations.

 

Hopeton Westby Jr

“We tried to speak, but we only speak to the chairman of the co-op and persons like that because we don’t really come together and go in. We haven’t had an annual meeting for the last, what, three to four years. They didn’t have an annual meeting that all the members come together and talk to them and see how the co-op is running. And last time we had one of those, about, what, 2018, I think, 2019. I think it was the last one.”

 

 

 

Myvette further explained that the future for fisheries cooperatives has always been grim, as so many species of fish are threatened and have limited production rates.

 

George Myvette

“What is the situation in Belize? And this is Based on the look, the latest information is approaching what I would refer to as dire.  The.  Science is telling us.  That much of the stocks are on a path of depletion.  Or they’re fully fished. Summit foundation looked at twenty species. And that included lobster, conch. And some of the fin fishes, snapper, grouper. Of the twenty species that they looked at, eighteen were in problems. That is not good. That is not good from a sustainable standpoint. It’s not good economy wise. It’s not good for the environment. And it’s not good socially..”

 

News Five reached out to the Northern Fishermen Cooperative for a comment, but we were informed that it would not be possible today due to all-day meetings. Britney Gordon for News Five.

The Northern Fishermen Cooperative is, once again, millions of dollars in debt. This time, with the Belize Bank to the sum of eleven million dollars. For a decade now, the cooperative has struggled with managing its finances and meeting loan payments and has been at risk of foreclosure on several occasions. While the situation is not favorable to the cooperative, the Holy Redeemer Credit Union recently offered to acquire its debt and restructure its financing plan. However, that action was blocked by the Central Bank of Belize because of the high risks involved. Today, Prime Minister John Briceño spoke to the media, saying that the government is trying to assist Belize’s largest fisheries cooperative with escaping the financial hole it has fallen into.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“It is indeed historic, it is when you think about the development of this country and about fisheries, you always think about Northern Fishermen’s Cooperative. And as a government, we have the responsibility to be able to see how we can help them to keep the cooperative movement alive. What we have done, the Central Bank has expressed serious concerns as to the viability of that cooperative and its cash flow. And I want to publicly thank the H.R.C.U. who have said we are prepared to work with them because we believe that by reducing the interest rate and the terms making it longer terms that they believe that it can succeed so we had a meeting with them. I think was last week Monday with the credit unions with last Wednesday with the credit unions with the cooperative and the head of the cooperative department Central Bank, Belize Bank all of us are around the table and we’re working on a plan. And some of the plans have to do is that the registrar will also now sit on the board to ensure that they do not take certain decisions that can affect them such as lending to private investors because the members, outvote them. And the membership, not the board. And so they felt that they are under the gun to be able to have to approve this. But we are going to step in to be able to ensure that does not happen. That we restructure the management of the cooperative and do everything possible to keep that cooperative alive.”

 

Reporter

“So will the Central Bank of Belize allow H.R.C.U. to take over that quite impaired debt?”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“It will allow depending on what are going to be the terms. We’ve already spoken to the Belize Bank. We’ve asked the Belize Bank; we’re asking them to write off their interest and their penalties so that so that we can save the institution. So, I think that the central bank will give an agreement provided that these things are met. And so once that is met, I think we’ll be able to do that.?

 

Reporter

“Will it be able to meet payroll tomorrow? You know it was it’s overdraft was cut.”

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“That’s a question you have to ask him. I don’t know to that level of details.”