It has been less than a year since the whistleblower Mark King emerged from the shadows of City Hall’s backroom to expose the endemic corruption and cronyism at the very heart of Belize City Mayor Zenaida Moya’s enterprise. Almost every week subsequent, a skeleton is flung from Zenaida’s closet, each additional one erecting a veritable mountain of damning evidence about the deficiencies of her character and her performance.

This week Zenaida dug even deeper: she brazenly lied to TV5’s Marion Ali when asked about contributions owed by the City Council to the Social Security Board. Obviously forearmed with specifics about the UDP Citco’s non-payment of contributions, Ms. Ali offered Zenaida repeated opportunities to come clean with the truth. Zenaida neither dodged nor dithered; she simply lied. She pretended that her Council was current with SSB payments when the naked truth was, as her Finance Officer admitted just hours after, that Citco’s non-payment had reached almost $400,000.

Moya's Mansion

Last week the Belize Times broke the news and showed copies of checks paid out by the Mayor to her brother’s trucking company for ‘works’ done in the city, though nobody seemed to know exactly what work was done. Some of those checks were made out directly to the company, some to the Mayor’s sister-in-law, some to employees of her brother and some to one Grayson Ewing. The Mayor claims that she has no idea who Ewing is.

Belize City, Tuesday, February 24, 2009 - The Belize Times has learnt that the Belize City Council owes the Social Security Board monies to the tune of $338,040.33. The news broke yesterday in the local media, and today the Belize Times was able to obtain a breakdown of the arrears from a senior source inside Social Security.

According to the source, the debt is long outstanding, as far back as September of 2007.

Dr. Cecil ‘Chubby’ Reneau

Dr. Cecil ‘Chubby’ Reneau was born on Baron Bliss Day, March 9th, 1950 to his parents Rowland Reneau, a World War II veteran and cabinet maker, and Alice Beatrice Reneau nee Ewing. He was raised by his step-father Clarence Stonewall Massiah a.k.a. the near legendary Mr. Mose on Victoria Street in Belize City since he was 4 years old.

After graduating from Holy Redeemer Primary School and the Belize Technical College, Chubby embarked on a 34-year public service career starting as an 18-year-old wood-work teacher at the Belize Technical College in 1968. During a stellar career distinguished by the combination of hard work, determination and talent, he would become the Head of Department, Building and Civil Engineering, Belize Technical College; the Director, Vocational Technical Training Unit, Ministry of Education; the Principal, Belize Technical College; Chief Education Officer, Ministry of Education, and the Project Director, TVET, Ministry of Education.