At this newspaper we have always maintained that the People’s United Party while in government stole millions upon millions of dollars from the people of Belize. This is something that is a known fact in this country. And while for years now we have known what the PUP did, and there was always some proof or the other that backed up this statement, never have we heard from the PUP what they did. That was until this week when a conversation which was recorded between a PUP supporter identified as Julian Chell, his son and Johnny Briceno surfaced.
Apparently in his bid to secure a victory for the PUP in Orange Walk, Johnny Briceno approached and had a meeting with PUP stalwart in Orange Walk East, Julian Chell. What he did not know is that the one he considered his friend was actually his worst enemy.
And so it was that after an hour and five minutes of talking, Briceno, laid bare in gory detail what the public already knew, the PUP during their maladministration sacked the coffers of the government without a shred of regard. A transcript of the more poignant things he said can be found on page 5 of this edition.
In the aftermath of Briceno’s political nuclear blast on the PUP they had a meeting at Independence Hall where they huddled together in a typical mafioso move to try to figure out what to do next. They came out and the uncomfortable fallout could have been split with a butter knife. Johnny claimed he was taken advantage of by people he considered his friends, Francis stated that the corruption within the PUP was an internal matter and the best of all comments came from Said Musa who said that Johnny lied, he went on to question Johnny’s state of mind while he was making his comments.
But even if you do question the state of mind that Johnny was in, the following statement will be perceived forever as coming from someone who knew exactly what he was saying: “That cancer that came and stole millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars from the people. I’m not talking about a little bit of money…millions, tens of millions of dollars they stole, that had this been another country they would have been in jail right now.. so I step down and I was sincere and they said that Francis was going to take it.”
