The National Trade Union Congress of Belize is taking the Briceño administration to task over the purchase of a fifteen-acre tract of land to be used as the site for the controversial university hospital. A pair of documents leaked to the media today shows that the parcel in question was purchased from the Reconstruction and Development Corporation (RECONDEV) in July 2018, for a fraction of what businessman Kenny Zheng is now fetching for the property from a sale to the Government of Belize. The land, acquired jointly by Zheng and Annie Hong Zu, was bought for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That very same spread is now being sold to the Ministry of Natural Resources for an astronomical figure of roughly seven million dollars. The umbrella union is up in arms over this recent discovery when it visited the Lands Department earlier today. News Five spoke by phone with N.T.U.C.B. President Luke Martinez.
On the phone: Luke Martinez
On the phone: Luke Martinez, President, N.T.U.C.B.
“It’s not about an N.T.U.C.B. position. It’s not about the government’s position, it is about what needs to happen. What needs to happen is that the government signed and agreed to a motion, the house and eena di senate to acquire the money to build a hospital on U.B. campus. So anything other than that we noh di support. But along with not supporting that, we are finding out a lot of craziness that are occurring. So this morning in our research, doing our own due diligence apart from what’s in the media, we found out that the government, well we found out that the businessmen purchased the parcels from RECONDEV in 2018 for six hundred and ten thousand dollars. From 2018, to now, you’ve covered and you’ve seen other outlets covered the condition of the place and surrounding areas, no development and the government is paying six point nine million dollars for something that the business owner paid six hundred and ten thousand dollars for. So the government needs to explain to the people. They are coming on the media to talk about their technocrats, but they can’t show who are their technocrats. So di government just di bullsh*t the people mi bredda. That is what is happening.”
According to Martinez, the N.T.U.C.B.’s investigation into the sale of the property has revealed that title has not been transferred to the Government of Belize. He says that the union has met with its attorneys, as well as other real estate agents who are also looking into the matter.
On the phone: Luke Martinez
On the phone: Luke Martinez, President, N.T.U.C.B.
“We can’t say it any, any other way. We also found out that the land hasn’t been transferred to the government as yet and we are getting down to the bottom of whether the government has made payment to the businessman.”
Isani Cayetano
“As the trade union congress, with all this information that you are armed with, what is the union’s move in terms of trying to bring awareness to what seems to be the government attempting to pull the wool over the government’s eye?”
Luke Martinez
“We are very open and transparent with the information that we receive, and we are prepared to share what we’ve uncovered with the general public. As a matter of fact, we welcome the media to witness firsthand us doing our research at the Ministry of Natural Resources. We just want to remind the government that the N.T.U.C.B. also has technocrats. We had a meeting last night with our attorneys. We had meetings last night with trained and practicing real estate agents and so we have technocrats looking at this also from that side who are seeing and agreeing that the government is bullsh*tting people.”
On Tuesday, we spoke with former Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who provided legal insight on how the government could have gone about obtaining the property in question through compulsory acquisition. Part of that process includes the establishment of a compensation tribunal to be led by a judge of the High Court. Here’s how Senior Counsel Barrow explains the composition of that tribunal.
Dean Barrow, Former Prime Minister
“The landowner deprived now of his private property will seek compensation and a tribunal must be set up which will consider the issue of compensation, will hear from the landowner, will hear from the government. Each side will no doubt produce some sort of a valuation from a professional. The tribunal will weigh the facts carefully and will ultimately decide on what is the view of the tribunal, the proper quantum of compensation to be awarded to the landowner. Under the tribunal, the chairmanship or the chair of the tribunal is to be a judicial officer, somebody from the High Court, government will nominate, appoint a second member and the landowner will nominate the third member. So there should be three so that you can’t have any sort of a tie. At the end of the process there clearly will be a majority decision and the landowner will need to abide by that decision. The government will need to abide by that decision, except of course, either one decides to appeal the decision of the compensation tribunal.”
A protest is being organized for Friday morning in front of the Prime Minister’s Office in Belmopan. Activist Nigel Petillo has sent out a call for Belizeans to join him and others in demanding that government reverses the six-point-nine-million-dollar land transaction in Belmopan to construct a new university hospital and to go back to its original plan. That initial plan which was tabled before parliament requires that the hospital be built on U.B. land. We spoke with Petillo today about the planned protest.
Nigel Petillo
Nigel Petillo, Community Activist
“For many times these things happen and all we do is complain and discuss it amongst our peers, spouses our neighbors, but we never really direct it where it needs to be directed. And, in this specific case this has to do with land. This touched me a lot being an activist for almost fifteen years trying to equip poor people with land. It is frustrating to see that the government was able to allocate almost seven million dollars on such a small parcel of land when we could have been doing things like this for a long time now. With seven million dollars I could have almost built a whole village facilitating over a thousand people. Yet when you go to the land department, they tell you there is no land. So, I thought to myself, you know what, I won’t be one of those Belizeans that will just complain. I have always been a man of action. I saw it fit to put together this demonstration. Who come, come. That is how I see it. I can do it by myself. I can go out there and just demonstrate on my own, but I think it is stronger when we have a body of people directing their frustration and anger to the government. Hence the reason why I thought it was very important for us to do a demonstration inviting different members of civil society, individuals, organizations, businesses, anybody who understands the importance of standing up. That is the main reason for this protest.”
Opposition Leader, Moses “Shyne” Barrow has responded to Nigel Petillo’s call. On Tuesday, he told us that he will join the protest in front of the Prime Minister’s office to add his voice to the cause.
Moses “Shyne” Barrow
Moses “Shyne” Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
“Nigel Petillo has reached out to me to get on board, as well as other civil society members. So, we will be having a protest at the prime minister’s office on Friday. So I invite everyone. No partisanship. The same way I can support the minister of tourism with the music festival and in welcoming superstars to Belize, we have to hold the government accountable when they are doing wrong. And this is absolutely outrageous. I call on the minister of finance to go back to the original plan. There is no way. Now, if, I don’t even see how they could explain the fact that this makes sense. You want to say if they could show how financially this saves them money, how did you save money by paying thirty-nine time the amount. Now if they paid two hundred thousand dollars, let us say the property was three hundred. If you pay six hundred thousand. They paid twice the amount for it. You could say it only cost six hundred thousand, we paid twice and maybe the entire presentation as to the justification might have passed the smell test.”
Indian Creek Village is a quiet Maya community situated along the Southern Highway in the Toledo District. The village has roughly one thousand five hundred villagers, comprising about two hundred households twelve miles out of Punta Gorda Town. But there is an unease in the village, brought on by different ideals. One is enforced by a Caribbean Court of Justice ruling in 2015 which stipulates that the traditional Maya system of governance remains in effect, and the other falls under the Village Council Act. Both systems have been around for centuries and while both have worked together seamlessly in the past, some residents of Indian Creek want to move away from the traditional way of life and towards the constitutional way that affords them to keep up with development. To move towards that goal, in November of last year, the villagers decided among themselves to vote out the alcalde, Jose Choc and his deputy, Felipe Sam, who they say were using the 2015 C.C.J. ruling to prohibit them from developing their village at the pace they want to go. They replaced Choc and Sam with Manuel Ack and Nicolas Choc, a decision that was approved by the Attorney-General’s Ministry. The Maya Leaders’ Alliance and the Toledo Alcalde’s Association, which adheres to the C.C.J. ruling, got an injunction in the High Court, however, and the villagers are now at a crossroads as to who are their village leaders. News Five’s Marion Ali was in Indian Creek for a meeting the village council called on Tuesday to discuss the matter with the residents. Here’s that report.
Augustine Sam
Augustine Sam, Resident, Indian Creek, Village
“Do you want the current alcalde to stay?” (Crowd cheer and clap)
Marion Ali, Reporting
The fifty or so residents of Indian Creek Village who cheered on their current alcalde, Manuel Ack and deputy alcalde Nicolas Choc on Tuesday, did so in defiance of a motion brought forward by the Maya Leaders’ Alliance and the Toledo Alcalde’s Association to seek the court’s intervention to restrain Ack and Choc from carrying out alcalde duties. It comes in the face of a dual system of governance that has existed for centuries. The villagers, however, are torn between tradition and development.
Anselmo Cholom
Anselmo Cholom, Member, Indian Creek Village Council
“What customary practice are we talking here? Are we talking in the 1200 BC when the ancient Mayas begin their civilization? Or are we talking when the Spaniards conquered the Maya people in the 17th, 17th and 19th, or 1502? So what tradition? I’m confused. So if we want to go back to tradition, are we going to build temples, Mayan civilization, like how we, like how we know about? Is that what we want now? Do we want our children to be slaves? We need to get an education. We need to get out of these things.”
Avelina Coc
Avelina Coc, Chairlady, Indian Creek Maya Arts Women’s Group
“We remove the past Alcalde, Jose Choc, and Felipe Sam, because they have done many things. They rejected our digital power. They even signed a letter without the consent of the village council and the villagers of Indian Creek. They wrote a letter to the CEO. That same letter bounced back to the village council and there the problem arises. And then we voiced our concern that we need a change of the Alcalde because he is not doing development. He’s just rejecting whatcomes to the village and because we need development in our community.”
Avelina Coc was emphatic about her wish to have their November vote for Manuel Ack and Nicolas Choc remain as is. Several others from the village shared her sentiment.
Miguel Ack
Miguel Ack, Elder, Indian Creek Village
“(Talking in Kek’chi Maya…translated) The past alcalde doesn’t agree with the chairman. How can they work together if they’re all divided?”
Avelina Coc
“Now with our present alcalde village councils are working together and then we see improvement streets being fixed. Things are happening in the village.”
The MLA and TAA want the previous alcalde leaders, Jose Choc and his deputy, Felipe Sam, to be reinstated. Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith told the media in June that they just want what the CCJ ruled upon to carry through.
Godfrey Smith
Godfrey Smith, S.C., Attorney for T.A.A
“The government is saying, listen, you come here to court arguing about Alcaldes having customary rights. Practices and rights. No such thing exists in the laws of Belize. You won’t find anything about Alcalde’s customary practices in Village Councils Act and the Inferior Courts Act, and the state has the sovereign right to legislate, and it has, and this is the law of the land! And our response to that is, and will be developed, that in the same way that way back when the Maya first advocated for protection of customary land tenure, it wasn’t recognized in the laws of Belize, so too, we’re saying, that the right of their villages to exclusively determine who will be their alcaldes, and the right to remove them, vests in the village. Not by virtue of any. Written law of the land, but by a process of constitutional interpretation, utilizing international treaty obligations and international customary law.”
FILE: Jun 30, 2010
In 2007, the villages of Conejo and Santa Cruz in Toledo claimed their right of ownership over their communal lands in the Supreme Court of Belize. The Supreme Court agreed and decisively acknowledged that the two villages’ customary land rights are protected by international and Belizean law. In 2010, the Supreme Court of Belize extended the judgment to include the remaining thirty-six Maya communities in the Toledo District.
That same day, the Maya Leaders’ Alliance, led by Cristina Coc, celebrated the ruling in Indian Creek Village. Coc told the media then that the MLA supported progression, just in congruence with the Maya people’s standards. She said quote, we have never denied development, we have only asked for a development that is defined by our identity; a development that we define as a Maya people. Not a development that is imposed on us, not concepts and projects and programs that are imposed on us. We have seen many development projects come to Toledo and it has done more damage than good to our people so we are at a very important point where now we can define our development. Now the management of these lands are left in our hands and certainly we’re not moving backwards, we’re moving together with our country Belize, end quote.
Situated not far from the Nim Li Punit Maya Temple, an archaeological monument that whispers the Maya tradition of past centuries, the way of life and the system of governance for Indian Creek residents rests on another court judgement. When that is determined, the people will be governed by what the collective wanted back in 2010, or what they say they now want for their children’s future. Village Council Member, Anselmo Cholom told News 5 that development does not mean departing from tradition, but they feel their previous alcaldes were imposing that.
Anselmo Cholom
“We’re not saying that we want to give up our tradition or move from the communal land system. But the people, the people that are leading the Mayan people is dividing us in a way where they did not respect the decision of the community. I practice traditions. That doesn’t mean that I cannot do it. Get development. That doesn’t mean that I cannot get a concrete building. And if we have to get out of a communal system because of that, then we have to change.”
While the number of people that showed up at Tuesday’s meeting represented only a fraction of the village, Cholom said that they speak on behalf of the majority of the residents who want development. Whether the villagers’ wishes will mean they have to return to the courts in the future to fight for an adjustment of the 2015 C.C.J. ruling to have their wish materialize remains something to see. Marion Ali for News Five.
It is arguably the most sensational case in Belize’s judicial history – the murder trial and conviction of businessman, Danny Mason and four others. Mason, along with Ernest Castillo, Ashton Vanegas, and brothers Keiron and Terrence Fernandez were convicted in 2019 of the 2016 murder of Dangriga Pastor, Llewelyn Lucas. The high-profile case saw several witnesses take the stand for the prosecution in a trial presided over by Justice Antoinette Moore. Pastor Lucas’ burnt remains were discovered on Mason’s ranch, located off the George Price Highway a few miles from his Belmopan home. His head was found in a bucket in a vehicle that Mason and his co-defendants were occupying. At the end of the trial, the five men were handed down life sentences with the possibility for parole after they have each served thirty-five years behind bars, less the time they spent on remand. Mason appealed the conviction at the High Court, and it was turned down. Now, through his attorney, Senior Counsel Hubert Elrington, he is attempting to seek the intervention of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Late this evening, Elrington explained the process of that appeal.
Hubert Elrington
Hubert Elrington, Attorney for William “Danny” Mason
“On the 11th of July, the Court of Appeal turned down his appeal for murder conviction and so we are now going to make the final attempt to get the conviction set aside at the C.C.J.”
Reporter
“So what does this mean now?”
Hubert Elrington
“It means we have to apply to the C.C.J. for leave to appeal. That is the procedure. And then they will set the timetable.”
The Belize Sugar Industries Limited has announced a record second payment issued to sugarcane farmers for the 2024, 2025 crop. According to B.S.I., farmers received seventy-five dollars and twenty cents, five dollars more than the second payment in 2023. Shawn Chavarria, the Director of Finance at the mill spoke with reporters today. He explained that the increase in price is due to strategic industry investments, new market exploration and improved global prices. Just over one million tons of sugarcane was delivered to this mill this season. But, on the other hand, close to a hundred thousand tons of sugarcane remains standing in the fields. Chavarria says this outcome isbecause of a late start to the season and bad weather at the end of the crop.
Shawn Chavarria
Shawn Chavarria, Director of Finance, B.S.I./A.S.R.
“I think all of this demonstrates the benefits of those investments we have made to improve the value of the sugar that we are producing and also to lower the logistics cost is also being complimented by an increase over the last year in global sugar prices. So, all these factors have contributed to a new record payment which we hope will translate to farmers utilizing these funds to do some of the best practices we have been advocating for, which is replanting fields which are some of the lowest yields in the world, taking advantage of new programs that are coming on stream, such as Agropro which the company launched late last year, the Climate Fund Grant being implemented through the 5Cs to implement new varieties. We hope that with this additional disposable income farmers will have some resources to put it to good use and help improve the long-term viability of the industry.”
Reporter
“I think the minister of agriculture has said there is some one hundred thousand tons of sugar cane still standing. Could you tell us why that is?”
Shawn Chavarria
“We believe there is a currently an estimate being done by the Sugarcane Production Committee to go out there and validate how much cane was left standing in the field. We believe it could be between sixty to that hundred thousand tons of cane. That is the exercise the committee is currently conducting. The reason why we have standing cane is due to a combination of factors. The media might recall that at the start of this crop we had this impasse with the BSCFA where there was road blockage and they held up delivery for twelve to fourteen days. Prior to that the company had wanted to start the crop from the sixteenth of December but the date of the crop was not gazzeted by the SICB that date was gazzetted until the twenty-eight of December.”
And, while the sugar industry is celebrating a record second payment, with an expected increase in the third payment scheduled for November, discussions over a price increase for sugar on the local market are still ongoing. Shawn Chavarria, the Director of Finance at B.S.I., says the price of brown sugar has not been adjusted for more than two decades. He contends that sugar associations must also add their voice to the call for government to approve a price adjustment.
Shawn Chavarria
Shawn Chavarria, Director of Finance, B.S.I./A.S.R.
“For us it has been a bit disheartening that the increase for sugar has not occurred, particularly for brown sugar which has not been adjusted for roughly twenty-three years. We have provided economic arguments as to why we think it is needed. We presented a very rational argument to government and it was from February last year that we did so. I think the associations will have to speak up as well if they want this to happen. From the mill’s standpoint our voice is not loud enough to pound government into action. Perhaps the associations might have to take up that effort. At the end of the day we do feel that is unfair that you have a product that has not seen a price increase for over twenty years when inflation for all the inputs that we use in the production process has gone up as much as fifty percent. We do believe the price should be adjusted and even in the price structure going forward there should be something for regular review so we don’t wait for twenty plus years to be revisiting prices and making adjustments. We appreciate that politically it is always going to be a difficult and sensitive thing to do. But if you have a structure in place to ensure that the review is done regularly, it would be easier to manage.”
Earlier this year, the Government of Belize ordered a suspension of the dredging operations being conducted at Angelfish Caye by the company Angelfish Caye L.L.C. The island is also known as the Will Bauer Flats. Operations of the company are still at a standstill as it attempts to gain environmental clearance and permits to proceed. On Tuesday, Chief Environmental Officer, Anthony Mai provided an update on the Environmental Impact Assessment conducted by the Department of the Environment. Here’s what he had to say.
Anthony Mai
Anthony Mai, Chief Environmental Officer, D.O.E.
“There is none so far in my estimation, Angelfish has environmental clearance, and I could only speak to the D.O.E. I know that there might be some issues with regards to the dredge permit, et cetera. I won’t speak on that. That has to be input has to be given from the agencies that deal with that. But so far again the Department of Environment has granted clearance. This project went through, I think, a very rigorous process. We had three public consultations for this project, two NEAC meetings, and at the end of the day, the NEAC recommended that clearance be granted, and the D.O.E. accepted the recommendation. We developed a draft on the, I’m sorry, on a draft environmental compliance plan that was shared with the NEAC had input, and at the end of the day, it was finalized. And so the, from our standpoint, they have environmental clearance. The thing is that once environmental clearance is granted, It’s not a green light to proceed, right? Environmental clearance normally is just one aspect of the list of approvals, a project that will need to proceed.”
