Email

Print

Democratic Governance against Corruptionâ€￾: that’s the theme of an OAS sponsored seminar held at the Radisson today. The topic is self -explanatory and corruption in particular is a topic all the common folk and government officials talk and complain about a lot. Mostly Belizeans rant about the wide spread corruption and express outright disillusionment with the system and the politicians mostly point fingers, calling each other out for their corrupt behavior. But today’s seminar was all about civil society groups working together to find  effective ways to address this issue. Here is more from the event.

Starret Green - OAS Representative
"When you think of what the negative impact of corruption it is frightening. First it weakens our democratic process of Government, it weakens the rule of law, it weakens our institutions of democracy and that is a frightening state of affairs and at the individual level it moves resources from areas that need it most to other areas that don’t need it at all and so what we have open is the developmental gap where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and that is a frightening phenomenon and that is why I think Belizeans and people all over the world should be concerned about the negative impact of corruption because it stunts development so development that should be meaningful, and sustainable becomes un-meaningful and unsustainable because of corruption."

Courtney Weatherburne
"But how does a seminar like this change anything?"

Starret Green
"Well that is a good question this seminar is geared at civil society organizations, social actors and the private sector and we are hoping that we can educate the leaders in these organizations in a view to start a fight to prevent because that is a mandate from the summit that every citizen ought to be involved in preventing, in minimizing and in some cases eradicating corruptions so this seminar is designed to motivate and get people out on the street as it were, in government, in private sector wherever corruption is with a view to stamp it out."

Courtney Weatherburne
"Will there or has there been a seminar like this where all government representatives, ministers or politicians have been invited because many might say that is the group you should be targeting."

Starret Green
"That is indeed real but here is something this is a start but your point is well taken we are going to go to the highest order and reach to where the corruption is."

This seminar came out of last year’s 8th Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru.