Peyrefitte was far more expansive on the latest developments in the Government's push to implement the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
For the past few months, we've been closely following the step-by-step process that AG Peyrefitte has been following to ensure that Belize is compliant with all the mechanisms necessary to bring the anti-corruption convention into effect.
Well, the international experts have inspected the country's current legislation, and in a 5,000 word executive summary, they've outlined all the gaps, and amendments they think are necessary for effective implementation.
We asked the AG about that report, and he says while significant progress has been made, there still a ways to go:
Hon. Mike Peyrefitte, Attorney General
"It's the executive summary of the first cycle of review. We have about 3 cycles and we've completed the first cycle. Belize is one of the few nations ever to be fully compliant and on time with all that was required of us for this cycle. Some people don’t know and some choose to not know what the UNCAC process is. Essentially what this is, is an assessment of where we are, where the UNODC would like us to be and recommendations as far as legislation is concerned. It's not a difficult concept to understand. What's important, and I won’t break it down into much details because I want Belizeans to go and read the document. If you can spend hours on Facebook and social media, you can spend an hour reading the document. The recommendations that are made are just simply to make sure we've become compliant to certain things in the first cycle. Once I do a summary of these recommendations, I will take it to cabinet and inform cabinet that these are the recommended changes to the law that were made by UNODC then I can say let’s make those amendments to the law so that we can have them be compliant. Remember UNCAC is not a thing, it's a process, you don’t sign on to it. I know for some people what they want is to sign up to it today and tomorrow you are restful politicians, that's not how it works. All that's required for the UNODC is for you to have certain laws in the book. Implementation is the most key component of that. It makes no sense for you to have laws if you don’t enforce them. That is why the DPP's office is perfectly positioned as an independent constitutional body. She decides who she charges and who she doesn’t charge. She can continue her investigation whenever she wants to with the current laws we have. Hopefully with the recommendations from the UNODC, once we implement those, she will have more tools with which she can act upon to make sure that people in public life are not engaged in corruption."
Email
Print