Belmopan, Belize:
Belize’s prime minister has vowed to survive a wave of anti-government
strikes and riots but warned that the tiny Central American nation’s
debt crisis poses a serious threat to its economic future.

A popular beach and scuba diving center, Belize has been thrown into
turmoil over the last week by riots, strikes at the main telephone
company and opposition calls for Prime Minister Said Musa to step down
due to unpopular tax increases and corruption scandals.

Musa defiantly blamed opposition leaders for the worst political
crisis since independence from Britain in 1981 but said he will survive
it and that the real threat is debt.

“The political crisis will be easier to weather than the economic
but I am convinced we will work our way through it,” he told Reuters in
an interview late on Tuesday.

“I am convinced that if tomorrow we called an election we’d win
again,” said the 61-year-old Musa, who was elected to a second
five-year term in 2003.

Musa, of Palestinian descent, said he had no intention of resigning,
although he might reconsider his position if there were serious
violence.

“If the situation became so disordered that life and limb were at
stake, I love my country I love my people, I would certainly have to
consider that option,” he said, adding he thought further violence
unlikely.

Belize’s residents are famously laid-back and Belize City, the
biggest town in this country of just 270,000 people, was calm on
Wednesday morning after the unrest of the past week.

Telephone service was sporadic and a teachers’ strike went into a
second day but more schools were open and more teachers working than on
Monday.

Corruption and debt

At the heart of the crisis lies nearly $1 billion of public debt and persistent allegations of government corruption.

Belize’s fiscal deficit amounted to a huge 8 percent of gross
domestic product last year and the Standard & Poor’s rating agency
said this month that the country’s finances were in “dire” shape.

“We have to reduce the debt and we have to get the fiscal deficit
under control and bring it below three percent,” said Musa, who was
first elected in 1998.

Heavy government spending and a tourism boom have fueled steady
economic growth in recent years but the fiscal deficit now poses a
serious threat to stability and the government has been forced to cut
back on projects and impose tax increases.

Musa said those hikes and spending cuts would close the financing
gap and reduce the fiscal deficit over the next 18 months.”We are not
going to depend on people forgiving debt.”

Much of the criticism of Musa’s government stems from allegations
that money from the social security fund, which pays pensions, was used
to back a short lived telecommunications company owned by an
ex-minister.

Musa accepted that investigations would likely uncover
irregularities but he did not believe there was any criminal offense
and he rejected suggestions that a corruption scandal was enough to
warrant new elections.

“If every time any government faces allegations of corruption they
were to resign and call elections, I think just about every government
would be calling elections every year,” he said.