P.M. Barrow Tongue-lashes Guatemala’s President Elect

The president-elect of Guatemala, Carlos Jimmy Morales, assumes office in January 2016.  And since his landslide victory on Sunday, he has been making statements on a number of issues. Belizeans have been paying keen attention on what he has to say about the territorial dispute over Belizean territory. Morales says he will not give up a centimeter of Belize and will continue to fight to reclaim the country. That’s not sitting down well here where people believe that we have lost ground to the Guatemalans. Prime Minister Dean Barrow on one hand says he is sending a message of congratulations to Morales, but on the other hand thinks that the recent statements by Morales portray him as a novice in diplomacy. 

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“Congratulations are due to him. There’s a letter that we have prepared that I will send to him offering as a matter of courtesy and with view of the special circumstances that attend the fact of our being neighbors and the fact that we have their unjust territorial claim to deal with, I am sending off a letter in which I am making plain that we remain committed to a peaceful resolution of the dispute. Let me make something clear, Mister Morales is a neophyte, he’s a novice. He’s pulled off a magnificent coup in winning these elections and winning these elections so handily and for that he is to be congratulated. But he will learn that the kind of talk that we heard from him at the start with respect to Belize is absolutely unacceptable. Belize rejects that in its totality and if, as I believe will be the case, those around Mister Morales will make clear to him that to proceed in good neighborliness with Belize, to proceed on the basis of respecting Belize’s territorial integrity is the only way to go. If he realizes that—or let me put it another way—the sooner President-elect Morales recognizes that, the better we will all be. We want to live in peace, we want to continue to live in peace, we want to settle the problems peacefully; we want to do so by diplomatic means. We will not be bullied and Mister Morales needs to learn that right quick. Belize will not be bullied. But we make that absolutely clear.”

Dean Barrow

Reporter

“Need we be worried here in terms of the complex of the Guatemalan landscape changing as a result of their elections?”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“Well what I said Aaron is I believe and in fact talking to Renee before we started formally, she’s told me of some statements that he’s made that already appeared to be some sort of a retreat. And it is what I said at the start when he first made the intemperate comments that he made, he will come up hard against reality. Obviously in the first flush of enthusiasm when he won the first round and because he is not schooled in the ways of diplomacy and even politics, he said some things that are regrettable. I am convinced that as we go forward, he will recognize and accept that that is not the way to go, that is not the way to talk; that not only does Belize reject that sort of rhetoric, the international community rejects that kind of rhetoric.”