Email

Print

Remember when the Association of Concerned Belizeans was bucking down the government on every legal front? Well, the government has changed, but the cases remain in the system. One of those cases came up today at the Supreme Court and the primary defendant, gob put up a less than hearty defence. The case is the Association of Concerned Belizeans and others against GOB over the guarantee and payment of the Universal Health Services debt.

You may recall that in May of 2007 – with the Prime Minister as an attorney - the ACB, the Belize Medical and Dental Union, Godwin Hulse and the National Trade Union Congress went to court claiming that that Prime Minister Said Musa and Attorney General Francis Fonseca breached the constitution of Belize and the Finance and Audit Reform Act when they signed an unlimited guarantee of the Universal debt and then later took over the debt – both without public disclosure or taking it to the National Assembly.

Before leaving office in February, it was paid off using Venezuelan and Taiwanese grant funds. And while the new government will not mount a vigorous defense to rebut the claims, the same cannot be said for the first interested party, the Belize Bank. According to its attorneys, Nigel Pleming and Andrew Marshallek who appeared in court today before Justice Minette Hafiz Bertram, the bank’s position is that the PM and AG were in fact authorized to enter into the contracts.

Moreover, the bank interprets the Finance and Audit Act to mean that the officials could have validly done so as the National Assembly must only approve the repayment of loans over ten million, not the signing. In the bank’s view, for those reasons, the agreements are valid and should be upheld. However, the ACB’s attorney Lois Young has already rebuffed the bank’s position saying that the bank is not the ‘innocent outsider’ it would wish to appear to be. She pointed out that in fact when the loan note was signed on March 23rd 2007, there had been considerable publicity about the controversial guarantee and highlighted the fact that both the government and the Belize Bank kept the transactions secret.

To drive home her point, Young went on to remind the court that even after the settlement deed was signed, the government gave an undertaking in the Supreme Court that it would not satisfy the debt even though it had in fact already been done. Young told Justice Hafiz, “make of that what you will.” The trial is set to continue tomorrow morning.