There was a time when Belizeans of African descent were the clear majority in this 8,867. This was under British rule, and there was heavy law-and-order in the settlement/colony.

    Since Belize achieved political independence, law-and-order has broken down, defence attorneys rule, and our Jewel has become wild, especially at night and especially on weekends.

    Wilfred “Sedi” Elrington was Foreign Minister in the Dean Barrow UDP Cabinets from February 2008 to November 2020. But if you read his columns in THE REPORTER, it’s as if he were talking about total strangers when he discusses such as his former Cabinet colleagues. 

    Here is what Mr. Elrington wrote on Friday: “It is patently unjust, scandalous, shameful and disgraceful that politicians who are the servants of these said people, and their relatives and cronies, are enriched to the point where they become millionaires in only a few five-year terms in office while the constituents who elected them to office and whose interest they swore to serve, wallow in poverty and misery in hellish shelters for in excess of forty continuous years.”

    That very same Friday the newspaper was published, Sedi’s older brother, Hubert, who was a Cabinet minister in the UDP governments of 1984-1989 and 1993-1998, told KREM Radio’s Marisol Amaya, apparently with reference to the three UDP governments in which Sedi served from 2008 to 2020, “They are a bunch of crooks.”

    Both Hubert and Sedi are attorneys, and the Elrington family success must be given respect, because they are not brown Belizeans who benefited from any kind of white paternity. As Afro Belizeans, they are the real deal, but it doesn’t matter to me what kind of Belizean you are: if you are exonerating yourself from Cabinet issues when you were sitting at the same Cabinet table, then you must be taken to task.

    Before I continue, let me tell you that a source this week told me that Sedi had put the Samuel Haynes Institute (corner Mahogany and Oleander Streets) into a trust, so that he could remain in charge after the PUP ousted the UDP in 2020. He had funded that school immediately after being elected as Pickstock area representative in 2008 with $200,000 Lord Michael Ashcroft handed him. We will be watching to see what his position is on Waterloo.

    I am in possession of a copy of a check made out to Hubert Eric Elrington for $10,000 on June 7, 2019 from Pickstock Development Association funds. Hubert is not from Sedi’s Pickstock constituency. He lives in Caribbean Shores. So this was a questionable transaction. If anyone asked, the story would have been that the check was for Hubert to supply plywood. 

    When I was appointed to the Senate by then Governor-General, the late Dame Minita Gordon, my term of office was from 1993 to 1998. The UDP’s Leader of Government Business in the Senate during that period was Sedi Elrington.

    In my speech on one of the budgets presented by Dr. Manuel Esquivel’s administration during that period, I brought up the matter of African and Mayan history, which I had been calling for from late 1969. Sedi’s reply was: “The people don’t want it.”

    Well, no institution has done more than Kremandala to promote African and Mayan history, and no one has created more jobs in the old capital ghetto than Kremandala. Straight like that. Sedi is a multimillionaire who hoards his money: he does not create jobs. I don’t believe he is in a position to preach to anyone about the Afro-Belizean crisis in The Jewel.

    I give respect to his personal success, but in Sedi Elrington’s case, I would say: talk is cheap.