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So, the opposition walked out on the budget - but they didn’t walk out for the day - after all, they had a no confidence motion tabled for the afternoon session.  

So, the party went into the members room and then decided to come out to the front to speak to a handful of protestors from Santa Cruz village in Stann Creek West.  

We asked the Opposition Leader about the walkout:

Hon. John Briceno - Leader of the Opposition
"Well we only walked away from the presentation of the budget because we believe that one; the Prime Minister is no longer the leader of the UDP and by virtue of that, he should no longer be the Prime Minister. Secondly, we took out a legal case against the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and he was found guilty of being serial violate of the constitution and the finance and audit reform act. He was found it have spent illegally approximately 1.5 billion dollars. Almost every year he gives supplementary budgets to averaging about 40% of what was approved, so it's a joke, it's a mockery what he's doing today. He's going to present a bogus budget and then afterwards come spend monies as he wishes and then try to see how he can cover it up, like what he is going to do right now. So we felt that it is important that we're not going to sit down and give any kind of credence to what the Prime Minister as he's doing right now in the presentation of his bogus budget."

Jules Vasquez
"Sir but aren't those phantom arguments in so far as we know there is a curiosity in the UDP constitution where the leader, if he is Prime Minister remains leader until he demits office as Prime Minister, number one. Number two, we know that appropriations, the man behind you Mr. Musa as the Minister of Finance, pursed many supplementary appropriations. It is a norm, a very bad one in the running of government."

Hon. John Briceno
"Well first of all, I don't know what kind of phantom argument you're talking about because the UDP constitution cannot trump the Belizean constitution, the Belizean constitution is the supreme law of the land, let's start off with that. Secondly, whether it was done before and it continues to be done today, it was wrong then, it is wrong now."