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COLA takes issue with Sedi Elrington’s speech at the UN

By on October 2, 2015
Wilfred Elrington

Wilfred Elrington

Belize City, BELIZE. Friday, October 2, 2015. The group Citizens Organized for Liberty through Action, COLA, is again burning fire on Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington.

At issue, is what COLA claims is Elrington’s misleading the United Nations about the true state of affairs regarding the unfounded claim by Guatemala to Belizean territory.

In a statement issued late this evening, COLA says that during his presentation at the General Assembly, Minister Elrington spent just a minute and nine seconds of his eighteen minute address speaking about the ongoing Belize-Guatemala dispute.

Says COLA: “it is disappointing that such an important issue got this much time in spite of the many incidents that have taken place in the last few weeks, and coming in the same week as Belizeans remember Danny Conroquie, the brave officer who lost his life to these invaders.”

COLA goes on say that it is alarmed that in what is potentially Elrington’s last address to the UN as Foreign Minister, he “failed to take the opportunity offered him to properly internationalize the dispute.”

The COLA statement says, “passing references to the Caribbean as a “zone of peace,” and blithe assurances of support of CARICOM friends, Haiti and Guyana are not enough. We should have been publicly and behind the scenes making friends and being open about how important this issue is to us.”

COLA also takes aim at Minister Elrington’s failure to mention a still pending referendum on taking the Guatemalan claim to the International Court of Justice, ICJ, for final resolution.

COLA says that at no point during his speech at the UN General Assembly did the Belize Foreign Minister say that this is subject to a referendum of both peoples who must agree to send the claim to the Hague.

“Given one last chance to redeem himself on an international platform, the Minister once again misled himself and his colleagues, who now believe that Belizeans have already decided in favour of going to the ICJ,” says the COLA release.

The activist organization concludes that Foreign Minister Elrington “has acted recklessly and grossly misrepresented what the peoples of both countries believe and were told about this process from the very beginning.”

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