By Belize Live News Staff: Keep the black shirts in the closet, Belize. The answer came early.
Cabinet announced Wednesday that it does not support the proposed acquisition of SMART/Speednet by BTL, killing the most debated business deal in recent memory before the unions’ protest machine ever rolled. The wear-black day was set for Friday. The Belmopan demonstration was booked for Tuesday, timed to the very Cabinet meeting where ministers were expected to decide. Instead, the decision landed on a Wednesday, five days ahead of schedule, and the streets never got their turn.
The statement itself is short and unambiguous. “After careful deliberation, it is Cabinet’s informed position that it does not support the proposed acquisition.”
The reasoning leans on a fact the unions had been shouting all along: BTL belongs to the people. The Government, the Social Security Board, and the Belizean public hold the majority of the company, and Cabinet says that ownership carried a duty to review the data and to weigh the concerns of everyone, its own members, social partners including the media, and the public at large. The acquisition, in Cabinet’s own words, was “a matter of national concern.”
There’s even a bow at the end, thanks to all who engaged in good faith, and a promise to always listen respectfully and act in the national interest.
Read between the lines and the season’s pressure campaign tells its own story. The NTUCB rejected the deal and mobilized. The teachers were lining up behind them. Talk shows, timelines, and town squares had turned the takeover into the question of the moment, with the Briceño family’s confirmed 22 percent Speednet stake, no wrongdoing established, but plenty discussed, sitting squarely in the frame. Whatever moved Cabinet, the movement got there first, and the government chose to say no before Tuesday’s crowd could say it louder.
So what now? Speednet stays independent for the moment, the unions must decide whether Friday and Tuesday become celebrations or stay cancelled, and the political scorekeepers will argue over who won. The scoreboard, for once, seems simple: the people objected, and the deal died.
So tell us, Belize: is this Cabinet listening, or Cabinet retreating? And what should happen with Speednet now? Let us know in the comments.
