分类： politics

On August 6, 2026, Lead Opposition Senator and United Democratic Party (UDP) figure Patrick Faber opened up about his decision to lead a mass walkout of Belize’s Senate earlier this week, defending the controversial protest as a necessary act to alert the public to what he calls a deceptive power play by the ruling government connected to a proposed deal at Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL).

Faber made clear that he carries no regrets over the walkout, even though the Senate was scheduled to take up high-stakes legislative business, including debate on the regional CARICOM Freedom of Movement Bill. He acknowledged that the bill, which the opposition had already held an in-depth briefing on with the deputy director general of foreign trade and raised multiple concerns about, is a critical piece of policy that the opposition will share its full views on at a later date. But in his assessment, the controversy unfolding inside BTL’s boardroom demanded immediate, unmissable action.

“What the government and BTL leadership tried to do was push this questionable deal through under the radar, while asking us to just go about routine business as if nothing was wrong,” Faber explained in an interview with News Five. “This isn’t just an opposition fight – independent senators, the local business community, national church leaders, and broad swathes of the public have all raised alarm that this deal cannot move forward without full, transparent accountability processes in place. They were trying to ram this through against the will of most Belizeans, and we couldn’t stay silent.”

UDP Leader Tracy Panton echoed Faber’s comments, praising the walkout as a historic moment of cross-opposition and independent collaboration that sent an unmistakeable warning to the ruling Briceño administration. “This was a strong, clear message that we will not sit idly by and let the government do whatever it wants in this country,” Panton said. “We are incredibly proud of our lead senator for leading this charge, and for pulling together this level of unified opposition that we haven’t seen before in Belize’s legislative history.”

Beyond defending the walkout, Faber criticized independent Church Senator Louis Wade, who has publicly stated his opposition to the proposed BTL acquisition but chose not to join the walkout – a decision Faber says wasted a critical chance to derail the Senate session entirely. Had Wade joined the opposition’s three senators and the three other independent senators who walked out, Faber argues, the Senate would have lost its required quorum and been forced to adjourn immediately, amplifying the opposition’s message exponentially.

“Senator Wade has already held a full press conference to lay out how strongly he opposes this deal, and it even impacts his own business interests,” Faber noted. “I understand he serves in a formal senatorial capacity rather than as a private citizen, but given the clear public opposition of the national church to this deal, he should have stood with the rest of us and made this powerful statement. If he had joined the walkout, there would not have been enough senators present to hit quorum, and the meeting would have had to be suspended. That is a tactic we will absolutely consider going forward, when the government pushes forward with irregular, unethical business that doesn’t follow proper procedure.”

In the wake of the walkout, the remaining senators proceeded with the scheduled session, passing several bills in the absence of the opposition and three independent senators. The original report is a transcript of an evening television broadcast, with Kriol-language remarks converted to standard spelling for the online publication.

As thousands of questionable invoices undergo review at Belize’s Ministry of Defense, a previously released 2015-2016 audit report has cast new light on the ongoing scandal, revealing that the controversial practice of split payments – a tactic used to bypass official financial approval rules – is far from a new issue, and has been overlooked by successive government administrations for more than a decade.

The long-running loophole works by breaking large public expenditures into multiple smaller transactions, allowing public officials to avoid the higher-level approval required for payments above set thresholds. For Belize’s government agencies, any payment exceeding $10,000 requires sign-off from senior officials; for regional public health facilities including the Isabella Palma Polyclinic – the facility examined in the 2015-2016 audit – the threshold was just $3,000.

The 2015-2016 audit, led by then-Auditor General Dorothy Bradley, documented eight clear cases of split payments at the polyclinic, a small number compared to the thousands of suspicious invoices now being investigated at the defense ministry, but one that uses identical tactics. Examples cited in the decade-old report include a $4,819.32 restaurant invoice split into two separate checks worth $2,000 and $2,819.32, issued and cashed on the same day under the same invoice number. A second case split a $3,444.20 vendor quote into two transactions of $1,722 and $1,722.20, also processed on the same day.

Auditors confirmed this is the exact same strategy that has been uncovered at the Ministry of Defense over the past five years, raising urgent questions about why repeated warnings about the loophole were never acted on by consecutive governments.

In comments to reporters, Tracy Panton, leader of the opposition United Democratic Party, denied any knowledge of the practice during her time as a senior government official. “I served as the Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation. As the Chief Executive Officer you serve as the accounting officer for that Ministry and I can say never during my tenure was there ever such a practice within the ministry of tourism and civil aviation,” Panton stated. “I am not aware that it was the practice in any other ministry, but if it was it was wrong and cannot continue.”

The Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) is now citing the 2015 audit findings to back its claim that split payments represent a systemic pattern of corruption exploited by people in positions of power. William Neal, an Executive Councilor with the BCCI, argued that the problem extends beyond individual bad actors to weak institutional culture and vague accountability rules within government.

“The thing that is interesting is that you still have your technical people very often in the same position and whether the minister can give you approval by word of mouth and whether there needs to be documentation for you to actually follow through,” Neal explained. “What are the systems within the government system that actually means you have been authorized. Then you can abdicate your personal responsibility to say I have been instructed to do this and here is my documentation to do it. It is not the normal practice that somebody stands up and say, its not the process that somebody has to do it. So I think it how we put that system in place and put it on, not auto pilot but how it becomes the culture itself.”

Bradley’s 2015 report explicitly noted that split payments were deliberately used to get around existing financial regulations, suggesting a deliberate pattern of ignoring procurement and payment rules at public health facilities. The audit only recommended that government agencies strictly adhere to existing Financial Orders, and included no calls for individual officials to be held accountable for the rule-breaking.

Today, as current Auditor General Maria Rodriquez concludes her ongoing review of the defense ministry invoices, observers are waiting to see whether the current audit will break from the past and call for meaningful accountability, or repeat the toothless recommendations of a decade ago.

Starting in the near future, every passenger departing from Belize’s airports will face a new $10 aviation security fee, a policy recently greenlit by the country’s Cabinet to address evolving global aviation threats and bring local security protocols in line with updated international standards. The Belize Airports Authority, which first announced the new charge, has laid out a clear breakdown of how the generated revenue will be allocated to upgrade the nation’s airport safety framework. Local outlet News Five reached out to authority representatives to clarify the justification for the new fee, following official approval of the policy. According to senior BAA officials, the global aviation security landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years, with new and emerging threats putting passengers, on-site staff, and critical airport infrastructure at greater risk. To match evolving international security benchmarks and prevent gaps in protection, Belize must make targeted, timely investments in its aviation safety systems, the officials explained. All funds collected from the new fee will be directed to three core security improvement areas: expanding the airport security workforce through new hiring, delivering advanced specialized training to existing security personnel, increasing the range and coverage of closed-circuit television monitoring systems across airport premises, and procuring next-generation baggage screening and X-ray scanning equipment to detect prohibited or dangerous items more effectively. Authority representatives emphasized that the small additional cost for departing travelers is a necessary proactive measure, designed to maintain the safety of everyone working in and passing through Belize’s airports, while preserving the country’s compliance with global aviation security requirements. The new fee is set to go into effect after final administrative arrangements are completed, with no specific launch date announced as of the August 6, 2026 report.

In a landmark policy announcement delivered Tuesday during the 2026-2027 national budget presentation, Dominica’s Finance Minister Dr. Irving McIntyre has unveiled the largest income tax reduction in the nation’s history, a sweeping reform that will replace the country’s long-standing progressive tiered tax system with a uniform 10% flat income tax rate starting January 1, 2027.

The reform eliminates the current three-bracket progressive structure, which imposes rates of 15%, 25%, and 35% on different income tiers, marking the conclusion of 20 years of incremental tax relief efforts by the Dominican government. Crucially, the existing annual personal tax-free threshold of 30,000 Eastern Caribbean dollars (roughly equal to 22,319 Belize dollars) will remain unchanged, ensuring that low-income earners making this amount or less will still be fully exempt from personal income tax obligations.

Alongside the rate and structural overhaul, the government introduced a second major change to the country’s tax rules: beginning in 2027, both resident and non-resident individuals will only be taxed on income generated within Dominica’s borders. All income earned from sources outside the country will no longer be subject to Dominican income tax, a shift expected to boost the island nation’s attractiveness for international workers and foreign investment.

Dr. McIntyre emphasized that the reform is designed to deliver dual benefits for Dominica: streamlining a cumbersome, complex tax system while putting more discretionary income directly into the pockets of working residents. “It is the most significant income tax relief ever granted to the people of Dominica,” he stated during the budget address. “It will deliver meaningful savings to workers and make our tax system simpler and fairer.”

Policy analysts note that the shift to a flat tax structure aligns Dominica with a small but growing group of economies that have adopted simplified flat-rate tax systems in recent decades, with the goal of reducing tax avoidance, encouraging labor force participation, and stimulating economic growth by leaving more capital in the hands of workers and consumers.

On August 6, 2026, four of Belize’s most influential civil society and industry organizations – the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Belize Network of NGOs, National Evangelical Association of Belize, and National Trade Union Congress of Belize – have ramped up their public opposition to the proposed BTL-Speednet acquisition, putting forward five concrete, non-negotiable demands and calling out the government and relevant entities for what they describe as unacceptable disrespect to the entire Belizean public.

The coalition of groups, collectively referred to as the country’s Social Partners, argues that after multiple rounds of public calls for openness and formal regulatory review, critical questions about the multi-million dollar telecommunications deal remain completely unanswered. These open questions span core areas including the acquisition’s compliance with existing national law, its potential impact on open market competition, internal corporate governance arrangements, the official valuation of Speednet as the target company, undisclosed conflicts of interest among decision-makers, and most critically, how the deal will protect the broader public interest.

In their joint public statement, the coalition emphasized that this sustained silence from responsible authorities and corporate stakeholders is nothing short of a deliberate slight to every citizen of Belize, who have a right to know how major national industry transactions will shape the country’s digital future and everyday consumer costs.

At the core of the coalition’s demands is an immediate suspension of all further steps to advance the acquisition until all four required actions are completed to the public’s satisfaction. First, the group calls on Belize’s Attorney General to publish a formal, public legal opinion clarifying how the acquisition aligns (or fails to align) with the provisions of the country’s existing Telecommunications Act. Second, Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL) must release full public details of the commercial rationale behind the purchase, including Speednet’s fully audited annual financial statements and a transparent breakdown of how the deal will affect consumer pricing and telecommunications industry workers. Third, the Office of the Prime Minister and the national Cabinet must publicly articulate the government’s official stance on the acquisition, and lay out clear protocols for managing any existing conflicts of interest among public officials involved in the approval process. Fourth and finally, the Public Utilities Commission is required to publish its full independent assessment of the acquisition’s impact on market competition before casting any final vote, and open the assessment up to formal public comment from Belizean citizens and stakeholders.

The coalition made clear that it is prepared to exhaust every legal and peaceful avenue to force compliance with these demands. This includes pursuing regulatory appeals, parliamentary intervention, administrative challenges, and formal legal action up to and including seeking court-ordered injunctive relief to block the deal, as permitted under the Telecommunications Act and other national legislation. The group also confirmed that peaceful public demonstrations are on the table as a tactic to raise public awareness and pressure decision-makers, with the sole goal of ensuring that public interest, rather than private gain, guides the final decision on the acquisition.