PM Barrow lashes back at Chamber

Posted: Thursday, November 30, 2017. 11:56 a.m. CST.

By BBN Staff: Prime Minister Dean Barrow today issued a release in response to the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Barrow says that he read “with dismay” the release that the chamber sent out yesterday. Barrow says the Chamber concedes the outrage of the PUP’s secret, illegal government guarantee of the private debt of a UHS hospital owned by “cronies” .

Barrow tells the Chamber that it is amazing and against all logic and good sense for them to have lashed out at the UDP administration for “reckless legal gambling” in refusing to pay the loan note and its costly litigation in resisting “the effort of the investor” to collect.

According to Barrow, it was with duplicity, hypocrisy and dishonesty on the chamber’s part . Barrow then referred to the Chamber’s own challenge of the PUP guarantee and loan note stating that it was right for the Chamber to fight but  questioning why it is not right for the UDP to do the same.

Barrow questioned if the UDP were to pay after the Supreme Court ruled that the deal stank. He also questioned the Chamber’s position, suggesting that perhaps their contention was for his administration to stop resisting and to cave in as soon as the investor got the international arbitration award.

Barrow further stated that it would mean that the Chamber is anti-nationalist and colonial for their suggestion. “Or maybe you wanted us to throw in the towel right after we won the first round, again in our Supreme Court, of our resistance to the Arbitration Award, our Court saying it was not enforceable because it was so obscenely wrong as to be against the public policy of Belize. Or should we have paid after our court of appeal came to the same conclusion as the Supreme Court?”

Barrow said that the “unbroken string of legal victories (until now in the CCJ) against this rotten deal, is all the UDP will ever need to vindicate the fact of the correctness, necessity and justice of its stand. And it is in stark contrast to the vacillation, inconstancy and bird-of-passage weakness of the Chamber.”

Lastly, Barrow asked the Chamber if they would agree to recommend to their membership an increase in taxes on the business sector to raise the moneys for what they now see as a debt of honor.

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