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Other new members of the board of directors filed in for a board meeting at 11:00 am. And around 11:15, Acting Prime Minister, Gaspar Vega went in for a brief meeting with the board and he addressed the media on the way out:

Hon. Gaspar Vega, Deputy Prime Minister
"Typically I just went there to assure them that the government is in full support for such a big challenge that they are undertaking."

Jose Sanchez, Reporter
"I know one of the main things you are looking into would be the books over the past few days. Is that something that anyone will be looking at right now?"

Hon. Gaspar Vega, Deputy Prime Minister
"I am certain that is priority, that and signatories for the bank. Those are things that they will be looking into for sure."

Jules Vasquez
"Certainly the staff here is naturally apprehensive, there has been a change of ownership and under the worst possible conditions - there is no one to even handover. You are jumping into a moving car with no one at the wheel and then the appearance of the Deputy Prime Minister might lend it a political interpretation that Gaspar Vega is here to see how much Orange Walk North people he can put into post here."

Hon. Gaspar Vega, Deputy Prime Minister
"I don't think they need to worry about that. The government is quite certain that the people that are working for this company has the best interest of the company and they have been here for some time and we definitely don't expect to have any changes unless they themselves want to do that."

Jules Vasquez
"When we spoke to the Prime Minister yesterday he told us it was his expectation that the CEO would be here to hand over but the CEO told me that voluntarily terminated his contract on Friday. So there is no hand over, there is no one at the helm. Is this something that you all are prepared to take over?"

Hon. Gaspar Vega, Deputy Prime Minister
"I am certain that the people that have been appointed to the board have the capacity to jump in there. Like I said earlier I don't think it's going to be easy but they are quite aware of that and they can take that challenge I am certain."

Jules Vasquez
"Have you all given them any priority directives in terms of who should we try and pay first."

Hon. Gaspar Vega, Deputy Prime Minister
"Definitely BELCOGEN has to be on the top list because as you know BELCOGEN is tied up to BSI which is an industry that is very sensitive at the moment. We had late last year to come up with some 10 million dollars to assist that industry and we would want them to fall into any added problems because of non-payment from BEL for sure."

A release from the Board Of Directors this evening says that at its meeting today, "The Board's first order of business was to meet with the managers of the Company to be updated on the current operations."

It adds that the Board is very encouraged by the commitment demonstrated by BEL's employees and management to support the Company's new leadership, and it quotes new CEO Jeffrey Locke as saying:

"The employees and management of BEL are tremendously committed and very competent to move on with the business of this Company."

Government has appointed four new directors - assigned by right of the 70% shareholding government has acquired from Fortis.

They are: former Financial Secretary and current BTL Board member, Dr. Carla Barnett, Former CEO of BEL, Luis Lue, former Managing Director of the San Cas Group Anuar Flores, and former BEL Electrical Engineer, John Mencias.

They join the other board members who stay on, including Chairman Rodwell Williams, and Directors representing Social Security Dylan Reneau, Anthony Michael and Dennis Jones. As was noted in the interview - they take over a company where there's no one at the wheel, after the senior management left the building. Last week Friday, Fortis CEO Lyn Young terminated and paid off the entire Executive Management team - including three vice presidents and the company secretary. He also then voluntarily terminated himself. Those senior managers get far greater benefits if they are terminated as opposed to resigning.

And while the new team works to get over that hurdle, it will also have to deal with a hot blast of venom from the Belize Chamber of Commerce which condemned the takeover in an unusually strong worded press release today. It says that the Chamber does not believe that it was necessary for the Government to, quote "forcibly expropriate BEL." It adds that the Prime Minister, quote "in haste and in the shroud of secrecy…once again abuses the norms of our parliamentary democracy and legislative process to expropriate the company in one day." It surmises that quote, "the path that the GOB chose will instead only saddle the nation with additional hundreds of millions of dollars in debt."

The release concludes haughtily that:

"The (Chamber) is fully aware that its position might run counter to public opinion, but…is based on what we believe to be in the best long-term interests of Belize and not the courting of an electorate. This notion that we are not patriotic if we do not support GOB's actions is insulting and arrogant. " "We urge all political parties'…to resist from stirring anti private sector, xenophobic and racist sentiments. " End quote.

We note that the Chamber made no mention of either xenophobia, or race when Fortis President Stan Marshall famously said he doesn't know what the members of the PUC are smoking. For full disclosure, we should point out that the person listed as the President of the Chamber on its website is Kay Menzies who was a former Director of BEL for Fortis right up to the time of the takeover.