Maria Rodriguez has officially taken on the role of auditor general. Her appointment was approved by the House of Representatives and Senate, despite some pushbacks from the Opposition and its allies in the upper house. Earlier today, Rodriguez visited the Governor General’s office in Belmopan to take her Oath of Office. She will serve until 2047, making her the longest-serving senior civil servant responsible for enhancing government accountability through audits and reports on government operations. Earlier today, News Five spoke by phone with Dean Flowers, President of the Public Service Union.
On the phone: Dean Flowers, President, P.S.U.
“I think it’s important that firstly I recognize the excellent work of the senator for the NTUCB in highlighting and expressing to the country the concerns that labor has with the appointment. But, nonetheless, we live in a democracy, albeit it’s extremely messy. I think that it’s also important that I point out how ironic the pronouncement of the Chamber was. The chamber senator would have questioned the qualifications and whether or not the individual was suitable but yet would not have taken a position such as that which the labor senator would have taken. The recommendation has passed through successfully, through both houses and so it is important that we recognize that and we offer congratulations to the newly appointed Auditor General. It is also important that we give her our full support, and so it is important then that as the representative of public sector workers that we have a conversation with her during which I intend to be twofold. How do we ensure and assist that the environment in which public officers work in within the Auditor General’s ministry in terms of all the legacy grievances that exist and that existed? How do we get past those to ensure that the officers can focus on giving her their full support to ensure that they’re able to deliver for the people of Belize through regular and quality audits?”
Flowers is urging the new auditor general to keep the government in check by thoroughly examining the financial records of various ministries to prevent corruption.
On the phone: Dean Flowers, President, P.S.U.
“How can we support her office to ensure that the officers are properly changed and that there is not undue influence on her office to put people, to hire people within that office through political directorate who we know may not have the requisite qualification and competency. I think that is also something that we have to safeguard and support her with. And finally, we as a union must hold her accountable. We must hold her accountable to ensure that she’s delivering timely and regular audits. I’m not talking about audit of financial statements, I’m talking about getting inside these ministries and conduct risk audits, conduct other audits that can be conducted to unmask and expose the mass corruption that exist in many of these ministries. She takes instructions from no one and I would hope that she would rely on this clause when she starts getting political calls, whether it be from the Office of the Prime Minister to shut down an audit which has happened before in the past administration and under this administration it has occurred. And I dare say, they can challenge that statement and tell her to continue the audit or commence the audit.”
Earlier this week, we interviewed the U.D.P.’s Cayo North Candidate, Doctor Omar Figueroa. He urged the Elections and Boundaries Commission to remove one hundred and twenty-four names from the constituency’s voter list, based on a 2024 Magistrates Court ruling. Today, we asked EBC Commissioner Orlando Espat about this request. Espat explained that the People’s United Party is appealing the decision, which stops the commission from removing the names.
Orlando Espat, Commissioner, E.B.C
“Well just remember, it is an appeal. So, if you go to court and the magistrate or the high court will tell you they find you guilty and sentence you, but you launch and appeal, there is nothing you can do until the Court of Appeal listens to it. I think on this case the PUP side said they will appeal the decision of the court, of the Magistrate. That happens in San Ignacio and they appealed. This is before the High Court and this is why we don’t want to speak on it. We cannot remove any elector and disenfranchise them from the voters list without the authority of the High Court. To remove the High Court has to do that. IF they say keep them, it is the same we keep them.”
While the Moses “Shyne” Barrow U.D.P. has named Doctor Omar Figueroa as its candidate for Cayo North, several constituencies still lack candidates. With Nomination Day set for Monday, we asked Peyrefitte when the party will announce its full slate.
Reporter
“Less than a week to nomination day and you all haven’t launched your candidates as yet. When will you launch your candidates?”
Michael Peyrefitte, Chairman, U.D.P
“You will be seeing them when you see them, very soon. It will be before nomination day. Dah fih we party, nuh your party.”
Reporter
“But people want to know who will be representing them.”
Michael Peyrefitte
“Our people know and they will be formally introduced very soon.”
Reporter
“Are you able to say if the party has chosen another candidate for Collet?”
Michael Peyrefitte
“Our candidates will be put out there very soon and you will know exactly who is running.”
Paul Lopez
“Talk about the decision to select that individual. You were there when Mr Barrow fully endorsed her and defended her?”
Michael Peyrefitte
“We move forward, we move forward. That is behind us. We are moving forward. Very soon you will get clearly who our candidates will be for the next general election. We move forward.”
Reporter
“How much seats you think the UDP will win?”
Micheal Peyrefitte
“All thirty-one.”
Paul Lopez
“What makes you so confident?”
Michael Peyrefitte
“I am a lifelong UDP and I believe in myself and my party and people.”
The United Democratic Party is heading into the 2025 general election more divided than it has been in at least 20 years. However, today, both factions managed to sit in the same room without any tensions or arguments. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they were there together. We asked Peyrefitte if he had no choice but to accept the party’s divide with only two weeks left before the election.
Michael Peyrefitte, Chairman, U.D.P
“There is no divide, as far as I am concerned. There is one UDP. I don’t know, splinter organizations from the UDP can be formed. It is a free country. It is not a dictatorship. You are free associate or disassociate with anybody you want. It is not a matter of coming to terms with it. It is a matter of real life. If a person does not want to be a part of that organization and they demonstrate they don’t want to be a part of that organization, what can you do? You can’t do anything. You have to move on, because the organization will always be much more important than anyone person or sets of persons.”
Finally, we asked Peyrefitte if he thinks the Prime Minister called the general election too early, especially since the redistricting wasn’t finished. Peyrefitte said it’s the Prime Minister’s prerogative, and the people need a chance to decide at the polls.
Michael Peyrefitte
Michael Peyrefitte, Chairman, U.D.P
“It is his prerogative. The law allows him to advice the Governor General to dissolve the parliament and set date for the election. That is his prerogative within the law. He didn’t do anything illegal by doing that. All I asked was , why if you are claiming you have been running such a wonderful economy that on the last day of parliament you have to borrow two hundred million dollars. At the end of financial year and why you need to at the cost of forty-two million dollars to the public you have to beg Taiwan to push back a hundred and eighty million dollars in loans that they UDP never did in twelve years. We never asked for any excuse on those loans. They come in, claim they are running a humming economy, but when you look at what they do, their report card is an F.”
Paul Lopez
“Do you believe that much like the 2020 election, this one is illegal because redistricting has not taken place and the electoral constituencies are illegal.”
Michael Peyrefitte
“I have not looked into that, but I think I like the fact that the election is Marchtwelfth. The people need to be given a decision to decide how they rate this current government form 2020, to now.”
The People’s United Party, in its Plan Belize manifesto, presented a policy paper that would advance the Education Agenda in Belize. One of the initiatives was to implement a new curriculum, a module that the Ministry of Education introduced at the start of the 2023-2024 school year. Under its structure, students are assessed based on how well they grasp the contents. In this week’s edition of the Five Point Breakdown, we explore how the education system at the high school level has performed since 2020. The Minister of Education, Francis Fonseca, said while there have been quite a few achievements realized, there’s a lot more to complete. We got the perspectives of two high school principals who manage high schools that are on the north and south sides of Belize City on how the revamping of the curriculum has resulted in the students’ performance. Interestingly, while students at both schools have commonalities in weak areas, the COVID-19 pandemic is the reason for those weaknesses at one of the institutions, while attendance issues among its student population, mainly due to social challenges, was the reason for its students’ academic challenges. News Five’s Marion Ali reports.
Marion Ali, Reporting
It’s a typical school day at Sadie Vernon High School, but only a fraction of the two hundred and two enrolled students is present. Students here receive free tuition, uniforms, daily meals, transportation, and learning devices. Despite this support, many students at the four Belize City schools in the Southside Upliftment Project still struggle with attendance.
Social Issues & School Attendance
Deborah Martin
Deborah Martin, Principal, Sadie Vernon High School
“Being absent, just because they want to be absent and you can see them on the street when you walk down the lane and so on. It tells a picture to you that, you know, I’m in school but I’m not necessarily in school. Sometimes parents may say, I need my child to come and help me pick up the younger brother or younger sister. You know, I need to send my child to pick up money from social and, you know, these are things that cause them to be out of school.”
Sadie Vernon, Gwen Liz, Maud Williams, and Excelsior High School were chosen by the Ministry of Education for the project. This initiative is part of a broader effort to enhance education quality in Belize, launched after the PUP came to power in 2020.
Francis Fonseca
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
“The Education Upliftment Project has been very successful, really transforming lives across the country. We now have over twenty-one high schools across the country that are a part of that free education program. So, with that we’re about fifty percent of where we want to be.”
Marion Ali
“While the Ministry of Education has made efforts to improve the quality of education in Belize, one factor has hampered its effect. As Principal of E.P. Yorke High School, Karen Canto shares, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the performance of its students, particularly in math. As a result, the school has had to offer additional classes for them to catch up.”
COVID & Education
Karen Canto
Karen Canto, Principal, E.P. Yorke High School
“One of our challenges is deficiencies that COVID unfortunately brought on us because we have a lot of deficiencies in the basic skills that the kids need, as in English and math. We don’t even have to go beyond that. The basics as in multiplication, division, the basic skills, computation, a lot of them have lacking. They struggle to write; their penmanship is poor and reading cursive, for example – a teacher writes in cursive on the whiteboard, they can’t read it. Their handwriting, although they’re in first, second form, they’re writing like they’re in standard one. And we still have to have them ready for sixth form, right, so lately we have been trying to fill in the blanks. First and second forms do remedial in the evenings. Past students, E.P. Yorkers that are at U.B. or John’s, they come in four days of the week.”
We discovered that students struggle with similar subjects. According to Deborah Martin, the Principal of Sadie Vernon, math and literacy are particularly challenging for the students.
Problems with Math and English
Deborah Martin
“We have students with reading issues or they lack the foundational skills in reading and numeracy and even in the social aspect of it. And so, to fit that curriculum or localize it to our school, we can only take some of the things that they give us to put it into action here. And because we have to meet our students where they came and to help them incrementally improve, they may not be meeting the standards for certain levels at our high school.”
Minister of Education, Francis Fonseca stated that the goal of many Plan Belize initiatives is to raise education standards.
Francis Fonseca
“We unveiled for the nation our new competency-based curriculum. I’m very proud of that curriculum. Obviously, it’s still a work in progress in terms of getting adopted across our education system. Curriculum reform was another major commitment that we made, that we’re very proud of the fact that we were able to put in place this very progressive, very comprehensive, competency-based approach to learning and teaching. Another commitment we made was free education, and again there we’ve achieved what we started. We set up and established for the first time a science and technology unit as a part of the Ministry of Education acknowledgement and recognition of the importance of science and technology to education. We established the 501 Academy portal. We established the Teacher Learning Institute as a digital portal again for training our teachers.”
Fonseca also emphasized the ConnectEd Project, which offers free internet access to schools across Belize and an unprecedented number of scholarships for students to attend their chosen schools. We asked the two principals for their views on whether the quality of education has improved since these programs were introduced in recent years.
Has Education Quality Improved?
Deborah Martin
“We have incrementally improved, but we’re not where we’re supposed to be.”
Karen Canto
“ I came straight out of sixth form, no pedagogy, nothing. Today, almost everybody you interview is already a licensed teacher, and they already finished their diploma education, or their bachelors in education, so they are more qualified to deliver for sure.”
The minister highlighted areas needing urgent attention under Plan Belize 2.0, such as special education and vocational training.
Urgent Priority Areas
Francis Fonseca
“Stella Maris, we have planned, we’ve been working for two years on a plan to really rehabilitate, refurbish the Stella Maris School. One key area that I want to focus on moving forward is really more investment in TVET, more investment in technical, vocational education and training. If we are equipping our people, our young people in particular, with the skills and tools they need to find jobs.”
Fonseca announced that a hundred-and-twenty-five-million-dollar grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation will be used to reform the vocational education system and improve the legal framework for education. Marion Ali for News Five.
Police have arrested and charged 28-year-old Ozen Rhaburn for the murder of Simon Arana Junior Arana, a 23-year-old carpentry teacher from Hope Creek Village, was shot and killed outside his home on the night of February 10th. Initial reports suggest he was socializing when gunshots rang out, leading to his tragic death. Today, Rhaburn, a fisherman from the Belize District, was formally charged with abetment to commit murder and discharging a firearm in public.
This morning, chaos broke out at the Punta Gorda Magistrate’s Court when a prisoner allegedly attacked the Resident Magistrate, Sashawna Jody-Ann Thompson. The accused, Mason Kelly, who has a history of serious offenses, including burglary, assaulting a police officer, and attempted murder, reportedly lashed out during his court appearance. Kelly, who recently completed a fifteen-year sentence for attempted murder, was in court facing new charges. Magistrates have long voiced their worries about the lack of security at district courts, but they feel their concerns have fallen on deaf ears. Many believe that out-district magistrates are left to fend for themselves without proper security measures in place.
Today, Belize Sugar Industries (B.S.I.) announced it is temporarily halting sugar production for the 2024-2025 season. This decision comes from key industry players who are trying to tackle the poor quality and low quantity of sugar cane arriving at the mill, largely due to excessive rainfall in Belize. B.S.I. also pointed out that the terrible condition of the sugar roads has made it even harder to get the cane to the mill. William Neal, B.S.I.’s Communication Director, shared more insights into the situation.
William Neal
William Neal, Communications Director, B.S.I.
“We’ve been having rains since October, and that has made it extremely difficult in terms of the field conditions for farmers. First of all, trying to harvest in these conditions. We’ve had reports, of course, from the feeder roads going to the fields. So the fields, the roads have been in very terrible condition and the fields have been in terrible conditions. This is not a good time to be harvesting because obviously the amount of mud and the difficulty that farmers have to extract their cane makes it extremely difficult. So you spend far more energy, in terms of physical energy and also gas, et cetera, to actually bring cane to the factory. Once they’re at the factory, we had to really deal with more than double the amount of mud that the factory can afford to process at this juncture. So it’s really not a good time to actually continue with the cane season, simply because the challenges at the farm level and at the factory level are just extraordinary. The cost in terms of what we’re spending to try and extract sugar from cane that has very poor quality at this juncture, simply because the rains have been so consistent makes it just not viable for us to continue with the cane crop at this juncture.”
