BELMOPAN, Belize - Prime Minister John Briceño has confirmed the resignation of his Agriculture Minister, Jose Abelardo Mai, dismissing suggestions that his administration is “crumbling” as he announced a second cabinet re=shuffle in less than a month.
Prime Minister John Briceño (right) and his former agriculture minister, Jose Abelardo Mai, (File Photo)Opposition Leader, Tracy Taegar-Panton, said Mai’s departure and the cabinet reshuffle are signs of what she described as the ‘unraveling of a corrupt regime”.
But in dismissing the allegation, Prime Minister Briceño responded by saying “does this look crumbling?
“Sometime, I kind of feel bad for …the leader of the opposition and kind of commiserate with her …I wish her well, I wish her well, but it’s nonsense. There’s nothing more I can answer to that,” he told reporters.
Media reports had earlier this week, indicated that Mai, who served as Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise since 2020, had tendered his resignation after weeks of controversy and allegations from a Mexican news outlet linking him to criminal activity, claims Mai has strongly denied, calling them “defamatory” and politically motivated.
Prime Minister Briceño said he believes Mai “has a good future” reminding reporters that “he owns a farm and one time he came to Cabinet saying he was riding a horse and he fell off.
“That is over a year ago. Many of us were bantering about it, teasing him about his lower back and his shoulder and now he was telling us he will have to be having surgery, going to have to take a leave of absence while he take the surgery and go through the recovery process,” Prime Minister Briceño said, adding “with your back it is a long process”.
Mai, however did not take a leave of absence and Prime Minister Briceño said the former agriculture minister was of the view that he “ would better serve the Cabinet and the government by taking time off to better take care of his health issues.
“I want to put on record my great and all of our tremendous appreciation for the great work that he did in the Ministry of Agriculture. I firmly believe that he is the best minister of agriculture we have had since 1981.
“Minister Mai and I remain very close friends. We have been friends for a very long time. His parents live one block away from my house and we still keep in touch and we continue working and in Orange Walk district we work together and also in Northern Caucus. He is still the deputy party leader for the north. If he wants to continue in politics, I will support him. He has been an excellent area representative.”
Prime Minister Briceño insisted that last week’s meeting with the United States Embassy’s Charge d’Affaires had nothing to do with Mai’s decision to step down.
“At no time did they ever tell us about any minister that me having to remove from Cabinet. So, I want to make that very clear,” Prime Minister Briceño said, hinting that Mai could return to the government.
“Well, we shall take a look at it. Once he gets better, and he comes back, there is always room for good people in Cabinet.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Briceño said that Rodwell Ferguson who was appointed Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, following the last general elections in March, will be taking over responsibility for agriculture.
“Minister Ferguson has been, …a deputy leader of the party, and he’s experienced. He has been an area representative since 2003, and so, yes, he was not re-elected in 2008, but since then he has consistently been elected by huge margins in his division.
“So, it speaks volumes of [him] as an area representative, as a person that loves his people and works with them and bringing him back into the Cabinet again, leaning on his experience that he has as an area representative and minister, but also to make the point, he lives in a rural area, so he can better appreciate the challenges of people in agriculture.”
The new Minister of Home Affairs and Enterprise is Oscar Mira, who had been serving as Minister of National Defense and Border Security.
The prime minister defended the decision to include Enterprise with Home Affairs, saying “we felt that because of the Free Zone being right there at the border, a lot of commercial activity being taking place between both countries and the concerns that they could be wanting the infiltration of the cartels wanting to get into Belize and using the Free Zone as a foothold.
“We felt that maybe it is better to put Enterprise directly with the police, so that then we can be more active in that area to ensure that we can keep that place free from these people.”
Other notable changes include Florencio Marin Jr, who is now the Minister of National Defense & Border Security, while Oscar Requena returns to his initial post as Minister of Rural Transformation, Community Development, and Local Government.
