Wilfred ‘Sedi’ Elrington
But according to the Foreign Minister, government’s mandate, in this case, does not include public consultation prior to making a decision.
Isani Cayetano
“Minister, as you mentioned earlier, you were approached with this proposal, if I may, two months ago. After having discussed it with the Cabinet, the Leader of the Opposition was then informed a month or so ago, why was this not brought to the attention of the Belizean public, in terms of this proposal being made by Guatemala to go to referendum on the issue of whether or not the claim should go before the ICJ on the day of their elections?”
Wilfred ‘Sedi’ Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
“The only thing that we are committed to bring to the public in relation to this matter is in fact the date of the referendum. We have already gotten and informed the public, when we did the initial signing of the Special Agreement again, we did not come to the public in any formal way. We notified the press and we had several interviews and there was exhaustive discussion on this Special Agreement. There’s all kinds of esoteric interpretations given to the agreement, the wording, because of the French word compromis, all kinds of fancy opinions were passed but there was no formal consultation that the government made in relation to these matters and I will tell you simply why. Under our system of government political leaders are elected for five year terms and are given responsibility to handle these matters and so it is not our obligation to go back to the public every time we are taking an action.”
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