“I don’t have twenty houses”: Thimbriel confronts the ads head on

By Breaking Belize News Staff (HP): Juliet Thimbriel walked back into Belizean politics, and straight into the crosshairs.

The UDP National Campaign Manager recently returned to the party’s flagship morning show, Fus Ting Da Mawnin, after an extended break from the airwaves. Her timing placed her in the middle of the political storm surrounding the ongoing procurement controversy, and almost immediately, she became a target herself. Political ads have begun circulating containing serious allegations against her, claiming she benefited from public funds under the former UDP administration, built significant wealth. She is also accused of orchestrating a plan to own as many as twenty homes.

Those claims, it must be stressed, are allegations made in partisan attack ads. Nothing has been proven, and no official body has made any such finding against her.

Thimbriel, for her part, is not hiding from them. Speaking with Greater Belize Media’s Paul Lopez, she took the accusations on directly, and the exchange produced one of the more memorable moments of the political season. Asked whether she was categorically denying the claims, she answered plainly: “I will be honest with you, I don’t have twenty houses. I don’t have anything close to twenty houses.” When Lopez pressed, fifteen, perhaps, then ten, she knocked each figure down in turn.

Then she opened her own books, unprompted. “I have mortgage at Belize Bank that none of them want to pay. It is over six thousand dollars a month and I am saying that on record. You all can do your investigation,” she said.

As for why the ads have appeared now, Thimbriel connects it to her party’s ongoing releases about government spending. “I came back because I realized the Belizean people were being taken advantage of and we proved our point,” she said, claiming the party has produced documents by the thousands and promising more ministries would come under its spotlight in the weeks ahead. Those assertions reflect the UDP’s political campaign, and the related procurement matter remains under a government-ordered audit with no findings to date.

Asked how she copes with the campaign against her, Thimbriel was dismissive. “They can say anything they want against me. It does not matter,” she said, before turning her fire on the government with a charge of her own, that the real problem is “the prime minister and the People’s United Party that continue to pressure the Belizean people and take advantage of them.” That, too, is her political characterisation.

What remains is a striking picture of the moment Belizean politics finds itself in, allegations flying in both directions, none of them yet proven, and a campaign manager betting that a public denial and an open invitation to investigate will beat the ads at their own game.

The post “I don’t have twenty houses”: Thimbriel confronts the ads head on appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.