By Belize Live News Staff: BTL’s board voted Tuesday morning to advance the $80 million Speednet purchase. By day’s end, the four independent senators had answered with one signed page, and the scorecard on this deal now reads like few issues in recent memory.
Against proceeding as is: the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, representing over 6000 employers. The National Trade Union Congress, representing organized workers. The Opposition. And now Senators Kevin Herrera, Louis Wade, Glenfield Dennison and Janelle Chanona, the social partner senators appointed through the business community, the churches, the unions and civil society, and non-governmental organizations, writing jointly and individually.
For the deal: BTL’s board and senior management, with the company promising a digital future of rural connectivity, network reliability and a purchase that pays for itself in 4.2 years.
The senators’ letter does not mince words. They say no substantive information has addressed the concerns on legality, competition and valuation independence. They call the move toward a telecom monopoly “regressive” and believe it contrary to Section 42(4) of the Telecommunications Act. They want the Public Utilities Commission to address the change of shareholding. And they close with a line of law aimed at no one by name but hanging over the whole transaction: a sale executed on a questionable timeline solely to evade a conflict of interest or legal claim, they note, “may bring the validity of the sale into question.”
Why do four votes matter against a corporate board? Because these four are the Senate’s conscience seats, designed to speak for the country’s social partners rather than any party, and they rarely move as one. When business, labour, church-linked and civil society senators sign the same page, it signals something beyond politics: the institutions Belizeans actually belong to are not convinced.
The deal still needs its definitive agreement, and the PUC now has a formal call to act sitting on its desk. The board has the votes inside the company. The question is whether anyone outside it can stop the clock.
So Belize: Chamber, unions, Opposition and all four independent senators on one side, BTL’s board on the other. Who are you standing with? Sound off below.
