It’s not within my nature to push for an apology from anyone, but sometimes you have to set the record right. A Facebook “friend” of mine selected a sentence out of a column I wrote and posted it to his page, with a comment, and then proceeded to distribute his work to a number of his other “friends”, so they could multiply his felony. I don’t know the gentleman, have never met the gentleman. I know that he was a favorite of one of our governments some years back, and I believe he is older than I am, because when I was a young man in the 1980s, he was already a big government favorite.

I choose not to call this gentleman’s name here. I like to call names, not because I know the people I write about (I don’t know many people) and I want to send them a shoutout, but because I try to be straight. I like to call names because it isn’t fair when you’re beefing to have people wonder if they are the cause, or to wonder who’s the cause. There are persons whose names I don’t call, for the reason that it isn’t necessary, and I’m not sure they want that. Politicians, I will call their names because they absolutely must be under the microscope, or they will take advantage of us.

I don’t call this gentleman’s name because I’ll go the extra yard to avoid personal stuff. I mention what transpired because in one way it goes far beyond me.

It’s not impossible that the gentleman doesn’t know what he did. He could be one of those selfish people who speed in their vehicles through villages. He could be. People like those would consider people like me inconsequential. He could be ignorant, or senile. He could also be flat-out malicious. What I am certain of is that he was wrong.

This guy copied the sentence, “We have heard that Puerto Barrios, a port in the Izabal district in Guatemala, is on lease from Honduras…”, and he wrote: “Really? When last were you in Barrios? Or anywhere in the Departamento de Izabal, Guatemala. Where is your citation?”  From there he proceeded to tag the persons he wanted to share his post with.

At the minimum, his post was unkind. At the worst, he was trying to make me out as someone writing on a subject he knew naught about.

I pointed out to this guy that he could not have read what I wrote. (In the column I wrote that I believed that (the story about the Puerto Barrios lease) was “a remnant from a bygone time.” I explained (in the column) that Guatemala and Honduras had gone to arbitration over an area that includes the Izabal District and that Guatemala won the decision, 1933. I cited (in the column) the source of the arbitration story.)

The gentleman responded to my comment with one about fake news, and another that I couldn’t follow. A couple guys commented on the post that they were aware of this Puerto Barrios lease, and the gentleman told them that they were writing drivel. I was being ignored, so I made another comment: “Guy, u cherrypicked. That is part of an essay.”

The gentleman has yet to apologize. All he had to say was, “Daam, Colin, I have heard this nonsense (whatever) too and it is so much b.s., so when I saw it in your column, or somebody told me about it, I didn’t bother to find out if your story ended there.” No, the gentleman just sailed on as if he must be on some kind of agenda. I could ignore. Not.

I’ll have to read more of this Shakespeare guy. I heard he said that a man who steals his purse takes something that is replaceable, but the man who steals his name, he will have their backside, or something like that.

There are no kind words, none fit for publication for a man who cherry picks. Look, if cherry picking is legal, not even God is safe. You can go to the Bible and with malicious selection choose what you want to chisel at.

I’m pretty sure this gentleman is university-trained. At those institutions they teach them how to develop arguments and win points. We see the growth of debate clubs in Belize. That is healthy. At these clubs they teach students to argue both sides of a question. I am sure they also teach them ethics, which is intended to make them understand that they are not to use their superior training to toy with people.

We human beings, we are all err-ers, so we shouldn’t be too eager to pounce on people when they trip up. However, if a person misinforms others they must get rapped on the knuckles, because that could lead to others following down a wrong path. If we err with people’s words we should apologize.

There’s just this one more thing I want to share about some of these university- trained people who are into the verbal arts. Some of them are sophists. I will close with someone once accusing me of being a sophist. The person who did that wasn’t male, so I had to let it slide. I don’t like sophistry: I’m for the edification.

Pereh-less Barrow is man without his shield

Firstly, a little something the desperate faction of the UDP will not find too unpalatable.

When PM Barrow called Cayo South Rep, J Espat, a “peasant,” he entered a grey area. Barrow emphasized that he was using “peasant” as an adjective, meaning rude, not a noun, meaning poor farmer, when he prefaced the onslaught saying, “You are not a campesino…” Everyone knows that campesino means peasant, so he couldn’t have been saying, “You are not a peasant; you are a peasant.”

What Barrow forgot was that he is a materialistic person, at least he is perceived so; a mega millionaire, at least perceived so, and that made the phrase a little awkward coming from him. I’m no linguist, but I cherish the sutiles of the Queen’s language. Of course Julius might just be playing games with the head of the man who was called, or called himself, “master of games.”

Now I’ll blow what little points I gained with my reason why Barrow would have been a glove fit for PUP 1998 to 2008.

The PM showed he is no relation to Michelle, “she of the when they go low, you go high” Obama, when he spoke in defense of his government in the House on Friday last. The color of his defense was all mud.

In bygone days Finnegan would have jumped into the trenches to protect him from himself, but it appears that worthy gentleman is now consumed with improving his own personal image for posterity. The PM no longer has Pereh as Speaker to do his hatchet job. He, Pereh, was an outstanding shield for the PM, until Sedi misled him and he fell into Julius’ trap. The present Speaker, while she may be a good UDP, she has NIP standards. She is not wishy-washy and she isn’t into the low stuff. So, the PM had to bully for himself, and it came over all mud.

It’s good to follow history. We will recall that the 1998-2008 PUP did a lot of good things, and they ruined it because they felt entitled. Belize hadn’t played with big money before, and the money from the sales (of assets) and the borrowing was pouring in. They felt they deserved more of it than their salaries allowed. They felt we owed them.

Even a casual observer will have noticed that when KREM’s highly regarded News Editor, Ms. Marisol Amaya, confronts the PM, he gets testy. This goes back to a question Marisol asked him some years ago, to which he responded with the suggestion that Belize should cut him some slack when he threw plums to members of his family.

Ah, and that goes back to a time when the UDP was destroyed at the polls, 1998, and there was a vacancy for leader of the party. It was floated that Barrow had no interest in the job. He could see clearly then, and what he saw was that his alliance with the British businessman, Ashcroft, conflicted with the leadership of a major political party, even more so the head job in the country. He was not about giving up the chum.

Then someone told him that we were desperate, after what R Fonseca and G Godfrey had done to the treasury. We know the rest; he took the job as Leader of the UDP, and he was handed the Prime-ministership on a silver platter.

I’m not in the innards of any party or organization in this country, but if you listen to the radio and read the newspapers, you pick up some currents.  We don’t know how real what we heard and read was, if it was really real that the UDP had to beg him to take the job, and that he took it out of duty to his party. What we know is what has translated on the ground, and that is that this PM is a man who feels entitled. I believe he gets testy when he is challenged because his party begged him to take the job, and he believes he saved us from the boys with the “retirement plan.”

In my little corner I don’t sweat over what the UDP thinks of me. The NIP faction in my world, know that I will never be a PUP. The NIP faction doesn’t forget that our Leader had to leave that party, for a time. We NIP are no saints, but you’ll never find us in any mischief bigger than a misdemeanor.