Senate Debates Polygraphs

Should the people who advise Belize on national security have to pass vetting and a polygraph? An amendment to the National Security Council Act would require it of the council’s members. The Senate debated the bill on Thursday. Here is some of how it played out.

 

Anthony Sylvestre, Leader for Government Business

“This body deals with a number of important things. So it behooves us, it behooves everyone that the personnel who are engaged, employed in this body, which has such sensitive and classified information within the access of the personnel within the secretariat of the National Security Council, it is important that those persons would be at different points in time, be subject to polygraph tests and a level of rigid scrutiny.”

 

Sheena Pitts, Lead Opposition Senator

“Lets say for example we find out that the commissioner of Police is a drug user, cocaine, on the verge of being broke and that a polygraph and a background and drug screening that reveals that, I am not seeing anywhere in the bill that informs me that something as serious as that which would then suggest that the commissioner of police is susceptible to compromise or undue influence, that there would be no treatment of that.”

 

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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