I told you already. Paul Nabor is a god. Someone said Belize has three kings. No, we have FOUR. There are many great and talented punta/paranda artists, but Mr. Nabor, I said it already. What’s the difference between great and god? The difference is that there are many greats; a god is someone without peer.

There are people who love the punta rock part of the genre more, and there are people like me who prefer the old Garifuna souls, which include the paranda. I think it’s the iconic Andy Palacio who deserves the most credit for bringing Nabor to the fore. There are other great talents, gems in Belize that “The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear.” My, Paul Nabor could have been lost to the rest of Belize, and the world.

I’m no ranking artist, that’s not my world, but the day I put pen on paper it hit me square that editors are to die for…editors in everything. On the road of life, our parents and other elder family members are our first editors. We are getting there, but we ain’t there yet—editors, that’s been a deficiency in Belize. I think Ivan Duran added a lot to make the Garifuna sound more easily appreciated by the outside world.

Me, I didn’t need any help there. I love music without all the electronics. Make it slow, sing from the soul, and give me a bottle to hold on to. There aren’t many who sing from the soul like the Garinagu, and the most soulful of them all is Mister Nabor.

Pere and Faber; and me spilling secrets

In the Senate last week, Chris Coye said we had to sign on to the New York Convention (NYC), for the credibility, and all that, but when Eamon brought it to the Senate, Pere, probably on seeing so many Ashcrofts in the new government, warned that they might be up to honoring some dishonorable debts we owed their boss. Coye said that if Pere and his party were in on the grand Blue Bonds deal before they left office, they wouldn’t have been suspicious about the NYC.

My, no surprise, from the day the Blue Bonds was announced the present leader of the opposition, Faber, has been bleating all over the country that it was their concoction. If you listen to the UDP, nothing new has come from the imagination of the PUP, all the projects they are cutting ribbons at, and are presently supervising, are from the belly of the last government. Those Reds should save some of their breath so they can tell us why dehn become so teef, tu.

Of course, Faber is right about the bonds, but about their corruption, he and they should be ashamed of themselves. They are going down, apart from their corruption and squander, apart from their ownership of bad-mind and meanness, as the party that secured party favorites way beyond their mandate. It started with Darrell Bradley and the lovely lady Candice. All those projects Julius and the PUP are supervising, the UDP locked them in so they could secure their favorite contractors. We wouldn’t have so desperately needed the Blue Bonds if they had managed the Petro Caribe and the local oil windfall correctly.

Bah, the UDP is squalling all over the place about projects that were in the pipeline when they were cruelly dumped from office. Crooks were in every nook of that UDP, but above water, Pere’s only crime is his halfway marijuana law, and oh, being very rude to our great friends, the USA. In short words, in case you don’t remember, he told them to clean their kitchen and curb their craving for non-pharmacy drugs before they start scolding little us.
Personally, I think Chris Coye is chaansi. From where did he, an appointee, get all that brass fu tell lie? Everybody believes Pere, that he had been sworn to secrecy. Many innocent men have gone to the gallows because they couldn’t tell. Chris Coye is too wicked to be just a political appointee.

The UDP party leader recently cried on Wave, “What it profits these people (PUP) to tell lies?” I’d tell you, Mr. Faber, but I won’t, because we NIP faction say we were never to become like them. No one has to tell me that that Blue Bonds is no PUP creation. Does it profit Ashcroft? Dang, there I went and spilled secret.

That devil deserves his due

The Coastal Road is coming along, and one day in the not too distant future there’ll be the ribbon- cutting, and bah, another landmark will be wrongly named if we don’t step in and fix things. All respect to former PM Esquivel, but his name just can’t go down on the road to Malanti. There will be other monuments to name, but this one da Hubert baby.

We can’t get back any of the public monies we’ve wasted, and it might take more than UNCAC to get back monies and assets that were stolen from our country, but we can correct laws that don’t work and improperly named public parks and roads. Hubert’s baby, one of these days I’ll tell you who told me that Hubert almost drowned while assisting with the field work when they were charting the way to that glorious spit of land jutting out in the Southern Lagoon.

I remember when that brute of a Hubert scolded a local engineer for underestimating the materials needed for the road by, was it some 30 thousand cubic yards? Hubert is no saint, not at all. That engineer must have been in a hurry, or he must have wanted the road done pretty badly too, or he didn’t have the tools to find out how much soft stuff needed to be dug up and removed. That Hubert, he was shooting down that engineer on the government-owned Radio Belize, and nobody on Krem could have scolded him for his excess, because there was no Krem —that because he had threatened to jail anybody on Partridge Street who put out a competing signal.

These Elrington brothers, Hubert and Sedi, sometimes they make my big nose smell hypocrisy. They made a living criticizing George Price, and when they got a break they were just as totalitarian, or worse.

Did I say Hubert wasn’t a saint? He went to the House and scolded Sam Waight for the failed effort to put a bridge across Iguana Creek, and never once did he say that an awesome powerful flood, the real “top gyalan”, was the source of the ruined effort. But, even the devil must get his due, and that road, if it will get a name, it should be his.

Guess what, name the New Mullins River Road, from its junction with the Hummingbird to the entrance to Gales Point, Sir Esquivel Road, and name the Coastal Road, from the entrance to Gales Point to the junction with the George Price Highway, the Hubert Elrington Coastal Road. And while we are correcting names, leave the name Rogers Stadium on the basketball court and from the bleachers to the South Fence, return that to Edward’s Park, in honor of the one who deserves it.

Mr. Edwards’ story has been told a number of times, how 8 decades ago he led a group of youngsters to reclaim a swamp and make it into the home of one of Belize’s most celebrated clubs – Unity.

Incidentally, I see the columnist “Think About It” is batting for Hubert’s rights too, and they being full blown PUP, maybe our traditionally stubborn leaders will budge. It would be a rare thing, especially with Hubert being so unloved by both a dem. But, we have to hope. That devil deserves his due.