Category: Regional/International

The Panamanian Embassy is inviting more Belizeans to travel to Panama. The Central American nation is a popular transit point for Belizeans travelling to Latin America and the Caribbean. Belizeans are not required to have a visa when travelling to Panama. Today, the embassy, in collaboration with COPA Airline, held an educational workshop to provide information on the many sites and adventures Panama has to offer to visitors who plan to visit. News Five’s Paul Lopez was at the event. He filed the following report.

 

Paul Lopez, Reporting

There are many places to see and things to do in Panama, from visiting the Panama Canal, to stops at the numerous museums, snorkeling, cultural experiences and so much more. This Central American country is only an hour and a half from Belize by air. This morning, the Panamanian Embassy, together with Copa Airlines, held an educational workshop with a purpose to increase Belizean travel to its shores.

 

Lorena Correal, Travel Trade Director. PROMTUR

“I can imagine you have heard about Panama, our modern city, our canal, or our tax free zone but today I will go deeper into our country to the other provinces or all the experiences you can have while visiting our country.”

 

Lorena Correal is the Director of Travel Trade and Alliances for PROMTUR Panama, a destination marketing organization. In her presentation, Correal highlighted the unique experiences visitors can enjoy in each of Panama’s ten provinces. With twenty-thousand rooms in Panama City and ten thousand in the country’s interior, Correal says there is an option for everyone.

 

Lorena Correal

“Our country is quite small which makes it perfect to visit many places in a short amount of time. Also we have great transportation. We are one of the only countries in Latin America that has an underground metro that even goes to the airport, making it easy for people to travel to our country. When visiting Panama you can check off your bucket list and visit the Panama Canal. You can visit one of our two visitors center, experiencing what millions of boats experiences while visiting the canal. You can also visit our museum which is not only beautiful on the inside but on the outside. We go to the province of Los Santos. This area of the country is the cradle of our culture. This area is where the artists still live and practice their craft. This area also hosts most of the important cultural events like carnivals or even the celebration of our beautiful national dress. Getting their can take you five hours by car or a flight of thirty minutes.  This area is very precious for divers, snorkels and it is blessed by the visit of the humpback whales from July to October and also seven species of turtles.”

 

COPA Airlines recently increased the number of flights it has available from Belize to Panama. Today, those wanting to travel to the isthmus can now do so on Wednesdays and Fridays. And, as an incentive, Copa travelers can take advantage of the company’s latest free stopover promotion.

 

Lorena Correal

“I want to say I am very pleased to be here in Belize City to share with our agencies and tour operators and today was to inspire your tour operators to recommend our destination to Belizeans. We want you to come explore our country, our beautiful city and priority destinations. We collaborate with COPA Airlines, its Panama’s national airlines. And we work with them, to invite more visitors to our country. And, one of those strategies is the stop over program that allows visitors to visit two destinations with one ticket. So visitors would have to book their rickets in advance with he stop over program and they can stay in  Panama for one to seven days, with no additional cost on their airfare.”

 

Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.

Former Bad Boy recording artist Shyne Barrow has broken his silence in the wake of a recent sex scandal that involves Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.  Allegations have been brought against the well-known music mogul by a record producer who worked on Diddy’s latest release.  In the wake of those claims, a victim of the December 1999 shooting inside Club New York came forward via a social media video during which she asserted that she was shot by Diddy and not rapper Shyne.  Barrow served almost a decade in prison after being convicted of the shooting, despite maintaining his innocence.  Today, he finally spoke about the allegations made by producer Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones, as well as the supporting claims made by shooting victim Natania Reuben.

 

Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition

“It opens wounds when you hear, you know, the victim saying that, you know, it was Diddy that shot her… and that was triggered by a lawsuit from a producer that produced on the Love Album who is making accusations and in those accusations, he says that the gentleman confessed to the shooting.  And that is what stands out to me the most because, you know, I’ve done my best to put it behind me and to move forward.  But it certainly reopens the wounds that I’ve been saying this all along, everyone knew all along that I was the fall guy.  But my political enemies and, you know, detractors try to make me into, you know, this criminal.  But everyone knew that I was a young kid that took the fall.  Everyone knew that, that was the story. I’m just saying that I maintained my innocence all this time.  I said I was defending myself, I didn’t get into who did what, but the victim is telling you who did what and I understand that there are other witnesses.  I’m not going to get into that, but it does open wounds and certainly I am relieved that people are saying what the truth is, that I did not shoot those people. I maintain that I never shoot nobody, that there were other guns there.  I’ve always said that, that has not changed and that is the testimony that came out.  Fragments were never removed so there was never any forensic testing to say who it was, but the victims are vindicating me.  Witnesses are vindicating me, but I have moved on, I am not trying to relive that.  And so, I am appreciative of whatever contributions that Diddy has made to help the people of Belize.  I wish him well and I pray for him, and I pray for the alleged victims and if it is true, may justice be served and if it’s not, it’s a tragedy because a global icon would have been destroyed.”

On Saturday, seven opposition leaders from the Caribbean region convened in Saint Lucia to inaugurate the ‘Leader of the Opposition Political Parties Forum’. The gathering included Allen Chastanet from Saint Lucia, Doctor Keith Mitchell from Grenada, Doctor Godwin Friday from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Jamal Pringle from Antigua and Barbuda. Additionally, Moses ‘Shyne’ Barrow from Belize, Doctor Ronnie Yearwood from Barbados, and Roy McTaggart from the Cayman Islands were present. As stated by Chastanet, the initial meeting focused on enhancing awareness regarding the constitutional significance and ensuing responsibilities associated with the Opposition’s role.  Here is a clip courtesy of HTS Channel Four Saint Lucia.

 

Allen Chastanet, Leader of the Opposition, St. Lucia

“The preliminary meeting brought into sharp focus the need for higher levels of awareness On the constitutional significance and resultant responsibility that comes with the office of the leader of the opposition. The solution meeting also seeks to develop a framework for parliamentary oppositions. Caribbean countries to share best practices to further strengthen the effectiveness of their constitutional rules in government.”

 

Moses ‘Shyne’ Barrow, Leader of the Opposition, Belize

“How egregious is it to present the budget to the leader of the opposition days before two days. You’re talking about in our case, it’s about  three, four, 5 billion.  I don’t know how much it is in St. Lucia, but such a crucial undertaking as far as analyzing the budget and making sure that the people’s monies are being spent and being able to come to parliament and to debate how the people’s monies would be spent. That’s what I mean. Or we mean when we say best practices, we should get that we should have meetings with the Ministry of Finance and the public officers to help plan the budget.”

 

Dr. Ronnie Yearwood, Leader of the Opposition, Barbados 

“Come up with standardized understand what this consultation when a government say it consults look like. The Guyanese constitution is a perfect example that actually defines the term consultation. It sets out what that consultation is to look like, how you are not prime minister is supposed to write to the opposition parties, the timing, the response, a whole process. And perhaps that’s something that needs to be formalized in each of our different countries, depending on the culture, but consultation has to be real. We cannot have this facade that governments often have this consultation. And we have to figure out what is the best practice for real consultation.”

 

Dr. Godwin Friday, Leader of the Opposition, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

“I do believe, you know, that it’s an important initiative for us.  to say that irrespective of the tendency we see all over the world towards authoritarianism, that we are seeing in the Caribbean, we have reached a stage where our political process is sufficiently mature for us to recognize that opposition is an essential part  of governance in our country.”

 

Belize and Taiwan have shared diplomatic relations since 1989, and since then, our ties have only grown stronger. And while there are additional areas of cooperation that are currently under discussion between our two countries, just this week, Belize signed a new agreement as part of a regional initiative with Taiwan, as Minister Fonseca shared.

 

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs

“Taiwan provides tremendous support to Belize in many different areas. in education, in health, in agriculture economic support. So we are discussing a number of projects, but we – those are still at the discussion stage. And we look forward to new opportunities for engagement. Just, This week, our CEO, her Excellency, Amalia Mai was in Guatemala, where you had an agreement signed between Taiwan and SICA to provide support to SICA, so a number – I think about seven projects are under that agreement in many different areas. So Belize and Guatemala will benefit from those projects in meaningful ways.”

 

India is on its way to becoming one of the world’s top economies. While the country, like every other, has issues with poverty and pollution, it has made significant strides over time to also reduce the prevalence of these problems. And now, India wants to strengthen its ties with countries on this side of the world. It is a wish that Belize’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Francis Fonseca, welcomes and says he looks forward to discussions with India in this regard because Belize could benefit significantly from it.

 

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Trade

“Both Belize and CARICOM are very excited about the fact that India is reaching out and engaging more Rigorously with the CARICOM region. India, of course, is one of the largest economies in the world. They are one of perhaps the fastest-growing countries in the world. They have obviously a population of, I think 1.4 billion people. So that provides so much opportunity and for countries in the Caribbean, for us in Belize, I think you know the priority areas are economic development, investment – how can we engage with investors from India with companies in India that may have an interest in investing in Belize in helping us to partner with us, to grow and develop the Belizean economy. So that’s the number one priority; number two of course, India is well-known for their technological advancement in terms of their science and technology. Indian engineers and computer experts are in demand all over the world. For example, if you go to Silicon Valley in the United States, most of the engineers, software developers are Indians. So there’s a lot that a small country like Belize can benefit from, in terms of their expertise in science and technology. And so we, certainly are looking forward to that. Another very meaningful area, we don’t think about this too often, but tourism. This is, as I said, a country of 1. 4 billion people. They have a huge middle class that’s growing and a lot of wealthy people, who want to travel, who want to travel beyond the United States, want to travel beyond Europe. Now they’re looking to new places and so a country like Belize, which has so much to offer in terms of tourism, we want to see how we can engage more meaningfully with India. Connectivity – we would love to have flights from India. We would love to see more tourists coming from India to Belize. Of course, as we have a vibrant Indian population here in Belize. So we want to encourage them to bring more of their friends and families to Belize so that they can enjoy the wonderful experience of Belize’s culture and our dynamic tourism product.”