Former PM Barrow: Belizeans Deserve Truth on Budna

Barrow says Belizeans deserve answers and he’s questioning whether politics played a role in Budna’s abduction. He’s also casting doubt on claims that Prime Minister John Briceño was completely in the dark. Here’s what else former Prime Minister Barrow had to say.

 

On The phone: Dean Barrow, Former Prime Minister of Belize

“The inquiry, the investigation needs to also look for answers to the question that right-thinking Belizeans will be asking. Was there not some kind of political involvement in this? Did not the ultimate instruction come from the political directorate? Or, did not at the very least the political directorate know what was happening and did not the political directorate sanction what was happening? Those are the sorts of things that a proper inquiry conducted by the right person, not by a member of the Belize Police Department. Those are the questions on which such an inquiry ought to focus.”

 

Isani Cayetano

“The prime minister is saying that he was not abreast of this abduction, based on the reports that would have been given to him on a daily basis. How does that work?”

 

Dean Barrow

“I find that hard to believe but I won’t say that it’s impossible. It may have taken a while to get up to speed and he may well say that nobody, neither his minister, nor the commissioner acquainted him with what was happening. I find that difficult to accept, but I can’t say that it absolutely did not happen. The bottom line, though, is this: it’s not just a matter of a political convention as it were or the convention having to do with the chief or the holder of the Office of the Prime Minister and the fact that it is a totally inflexible principle in the canons of our kind of parliamentary democracy where the prime minister is head of government. That, to put in layman’s terms, the buck stops with the head of government.”