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Prime Minister John Briceño pushed back this morning against comments from Cabinet Minister Julius Espat, who recently suggested that some members of the People’s United Party may have forgotten the party’s trade-union and social-justice roots. Speaking on Love FM’s The Morning Show, Briceño said he “vehemently disagreed” with that view. He insisted that social justice remains at the heart of both the PUP and the work of his government. According to the Prime Minister, Espat’s comments do not consider the work being carried out across the various ministries. He said Cabinet regularly discusses concerns brought forward by ministers and considers how its decisions will affect ordinary Belizeans.
John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “There’s one thing that I vehemently disagree with Julius Espat, when he said about only he and another minister are for social justice. He needs to look at what his government is doing. We are for social justice. The People’s United Party is based on social justice. And the time that we move from that, then we cannot be the People’s United Party. So I really want to publicly correct Julius Espat and I hope he would never ever say that only he and another minister are for social justice— all of us in that ministry, every cabinet we have one cabinet minister come and say, man we have this problem. Look at that Minister Shebat with the issue of the electricity. It was not Julius Espat as the king of social media. And I know he’s going to get upset with me but it’s the truth. It wasn’t him that came to Cabinet “bwai electricity….” It was Micho he came “Prime Minister we need to maybe take off the GST, it will cost us several million dollars but we need to be able to do something. Every minister, the Minister of Rural Transformation our there trying to find how they could get water to those villages and every time he’s behind me “Prime Minister we have to act right now we’re helping the cacao growers association and then the cacao industry to be able to buy over a company that produces, that buys the cocoa to export. So they own it.” We agreed to make the money available for them. The Minister of Agriculture, Rodwelll Ferguson, constantly finding ways how we could do what we can do. Now in defense what we say, ok we had this big problem with the bidding system so we said you know what let us give the money in the pockets of the BDF let them decide how they want to buy their food. That is social justice. We live social justice every single day and so I say this with great passion because that’s who we are. We are the party of social justice and look at our record look at everything that we have done. Look at DPM with the land we tried to make land available to as many people as we can. And even the Minister of Infrastructure Development, Minister Espat, yes we make the money available to him to be able to open more roads and highways and drainage and so all of us firmly believe ….. the Minister of Tourism when he comes and tells me look at how some of our people in Belize City live we have to do better. Or Minister Usher in Port, or the chairman of the party you know every one of us.”
Espat made the comments during an interview with a local news station, responding to questions about possible fallout from the PUP’s Belize City municipal convention, which was held on August 30./
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