At two or more recent sittings of the House of Representatives, Hon. Sedi Elrington has made statements that do not fall along the UDP party line, and at the most recent sitting his comments were the most scathing. Speaking on the extension of a State of Emergency on the Southside of Belize City, Mr. Elrington said that the government he has served over the last 12 years has failed, indeed that all political leaders had failed the citizens in that part of our country.

Many political leaders in Belize do not understand Southside Belize City, so they don’t grasp why every effort must be made to make life better for the people who live in that area.

Some leaders want to discuss urban and rural areas in the same breath. We should never look at urban and rural areas in the same way, because they are very different places, very different worlds. If you have a family in a city and you don’t have a job, you teef or you die. In the rural areas we always have our milpa, which is our “savings” in the bank, or we can go catch a wild animal, harvest forest products, or go fishing.

One of my many former bosses, Mr. Natividad Obando, told me, maybe half in jest, that most of the coupling in Cayo Rural took place during the time of the year when avocado pears and other fruits of the field were plentiful, because even if the boy and the girl didn’t have jobs they wouldn’t starve. Hmm, I bet parents in Cayo Rural were not unaware that young men were about running away with their daughters during pyaa season, so if they weren’t in favor of any relationships they would have been up with their lanterns, looking out for suspicious movements.

Many rural leaders don’t seem to know their connection with Belize City. Prior to 1961 the great majority of citizens in that part of the country were children of the slaves. After Hattie, in 1961, there was a great exodus of parents from Belize City to the USA, and since then there has been migration from our rural areas to fill the vacuum. When you look at the faces in Belize City, you see increasing representation from every tribe in the country.

Belize is small, and whatever happens in the main urban areas will spill out into the nearby countryside. Almost everyone in the city has relatives in rural areas and, there being no States for a youth in trouble to run to, those youths will run to the countryside, where they will spread the mischief they learned to survive in the harsh concrete jungle called a city.
My area rep, Hon. Julius Espat, called Sedi a hypocrite for waiting until he was getting out of politics to call out the failures of the party he belongs to, and Sedi’s colleagues, Hon. Patrick Faber and Hon. Michael Finnegan, also weren’t very kind.

I have a couple things to say to Mr. J. Espat, but I will save it until after the elections because, like the nationalistic Sedi, I am riding with the PUP — me because I believe in democracy, and because dis ya crowd really haffu goh. Of course I like Julius’s firm stand for governance reform, but despite his big education he is one who I feel has a few things to learn.

Mr. Finnegan has license to talk where he shud keep his mouth shet, because we have this terrible habit of not putting people in check. Give the Americans all the props, because their President Trump can’t make a peep without their vigilant media being all over him.

Mr. Elrington said he was worried that some young girls in his division were going about scantily clad, and hustling, and we all knew what he meant. Mr. Finnegan, whose claim to fame is that he knows the right thing to say to win in the election, kech feelingz with Sedi for that, and, true to form, he raced out there to grab a vote. Mr. Finnegan said the girls were good. Mr. Elrington never said the girls were bad; he said that our failure to provide opportunities for our people was leading them up the wrong creek.

I haven’t put Sedi’s speech in the House through the fine-tooth comb, because I’m not a fool to cut into the thunder in a man’s speech when he deserves all the props for telling his tired, washed-up colleagues it is time to go. In a nutshell Sedi said: We came, we saw, we failed. Don’t the UDP have any mercy in their hearts? Do we have to point out more of their faults to make them get the sense that it’s time to pack their bags?

Speech aside, I have a bone to pick with Sedi, which is that I don’t understand why he put Faber and Saldivar on the same plane. By the way, you must have noticed how their boss is winging it in every crunch. In a lot of scenarios in which he is questioned and in which certain facts are mentioned or must be confirmed, he has to go and check with the minister in the ministry, or Dr. Manzanero, and when it comes to the simplest figures, he has to run to Joe Waight. It’s like he isn’t briefed before he goes to the House. He isn’t doing a bad job, but too often he doant noa nothing.

Or is it that he just likes the I-didn’t-know-that look? That I-didn’t-know-that look, you could think he practiced it in front of a mirror. If you want to be really sinister you might say that when he first used the look it was calculated to keep the media off balance, and now, like Midas and his gold, he caught the disease. I think Obama and Trump use a thing called a teleprompter. Their boss could get by with some notes on cards.

Pardon the distraction. Now, turning to Sedi’s other detractor, Mr. Faber, he is bad, but not as bad as his rival. My observation is that Mr. Faber is a very narrow man, but I can’t believe Sedi put his mean faults on the balance across from John’s numerous baggage and didn’t see any difference. Flat out, although I criticize John more, if I needed a life raft I think I’d have a better chance with him than Patrick. But, but as a Belizean there is no way I could have supported Saldivar over Faber at that convention.

This, to the very intelligent and brave brother, Mr. David Almendarez: Braa you must have had too many beers on your last cay trip to suggest that Barrow hand over the reins to Faber. In a time like this we don’t need any experiments. If you think that the Barrow government is one-sided with the distribution of the food baskets, well, when it comes to the virtue of compassion for people who don’t wear red shirts Barrow is a stumbling saint compared to Faber’s full-blown devil. The records show dat Faber da nothing nice.

Also, Brother Almendarez, in Belize alleged/allegedly means, in many cases, that you don’t have the wherewithal to prove a matter in court, that you can’t get a court in Belize to pin some devil philistine with legal guilt. The energy should properly be turned toward the libel laws that protect the wicked.

There was a story about, a long time ago, that Ms. Zenaida Moya beat the stuffingz out of Mr. Vaughan Gill, beat him so badly the gentleman run lef ih shirt. If I were a real journalist I’d investigate, in full, and if da story da troo, in full, I’d put in a phone call to Zenaida, to invite her to remind the gentleman to have respect.

I looked at the PUP Vibes show on Wednesday, and there was the Commissioner, respectfully masked, and the host, Vaughan Gill, disrespectfully unmasked. He, Vaughan, should be glad he isn’t running in any election bikaaz, for what it’s worth, I’d campaign against him.