By: Omar Silva I Editor/Publisher

National Perspective Belize I Digital 2025

www.nationalperspectivebz.com

Belize City: Sunday 17th August 2025

Editorial:

The Public Service Union has now said it plainly: the SARA project is legally flawed, procedurally unjust, and without evidence to justify its existence. That is not a protest slogan — it is a formal Position Paper delivered to Cabinet. And it confirms what many Belizeans have sensed from the beginning: this is not reform, this is rebranding.

What has been ignored in all the government’s spin about modernization is the real issue of reforming the tax system itself. Ministries are years behind in reconciling their accounts. Hundreds of Defence Force soldiers have still not received tax refunds dating back to 2021. If the system can’t even deliver what is owed to taxpayers, what moral authority does it have to reinvent itself as a shiny new “semi-autonomous” body?

The PSU’s rejection points to something more corrosive: a loss of trust inside the very department being asked to transform. If 35% of the workforce is already asking for transfers, that is not modernization — that is mutiny. It is a clear sign that the government’s unilateral, secretive, and politically driven process has poisoned confidence in the transition.

And let us be blunt: SARA risks becoming just another statutory trough, where politically appointed boards decide who eats first. The union is right to warn about the danger of politicization and nepotism. Belizeans have seen this story before — “autonomous” bodies that promised independence but became captured by insiders and financiers.

Prime Minister Briceño insists this is about keeping up with the times. But progress is not about new names, new boards, and new payrolls. Progress is about accountability, transparency, and delivering on what government already owes its citizens. Before talking about data systems and international obligations, the state should first answer a simple question: Where are the tax refunds from 2021?

Until then, SARA is nothing more than a hollow shell, built on sand instead of substance. Belize does not need another politically engineered institution. Belize needs a tax system that is fair, transparent, and accountable to the people it serves.