Trevor Vernon pays up….is it in shillings?

Last Tuesday, Trevor Vernon, the unsuccessful claimant in a private case brought against Minister of State Edmond Castro, made the flamboyant gesture of paying fifty percent of costs, twenty-five hundred dollars, in shillings…delivered in two pillow cases to Castro’s attorney, Denys Barrow. Vernon took Castro to court for breaching the code of conduct as a government minister, but he lost that case on a technicality. One day after he made the first payment, a bailiff knocked on his door of his Burrell Boom house with a writ of execution, demanding the remaining two thousand five hundred dollars. Household items were crow-footed, and Vernon was given five days to pay or his items would be auctioned. Today, a subdued Vernon delivered the balance, and it wasn’t in shillings or pillow cases.

Trevor Vernon, Costs Paid in Full

“They’re paid in full, five thousand dollars, but I am sure some technicality will be found to say I owe another five because that’s how these people are I guess.”

Reporter

Trevor Vernon

“So in what denominations did you pay? How did you pay?”

Trevor Vernon

“I mostly paid in fifties and a US dollar bill and some coins but it was only like a couple, three four dollars in coins. Most of it was in fifty dollar bills.”

Reporter

“You seem a lot less determined than you were the first time when you brought all the shillings in your pillowcase. I know you were on Facebook saying that this is you…you were kinda throwing in the towel where this is concerned.”

Trevor Vernon

“Well it’s kinda rough when you get a knock on your door…I was in my drawers and a t-shirt, you know, taking care of my brother at home, and a Marshall comes in and he wants to mark all my stuff. You know, it’s kind of a wake-up call. And then all of a sudden B.E.L. wants me to put in a new meter, seven hundred dollars for a new meter, box, weather head, wires…and William Ysaguirre was saying on Facebook this morning that he was allowed to do it himself. I was told no way in hell they’re going to allow me to do it myself. I had to go pay an electrician seven hundred dollars, so you know it’s just a little bit of mean-spiritedness, just the timing of the whole thing, everything just came tumbling down. They were blocking my international calls to the states. It’s a little bit troublesome because I live out in the country and I don’t have a shotgun anymore and you know, I don’t want anybody to come knocking on my door in the middle of the night, that kind of thing. And I was certainly getting the impression that that was possible.”

Arthur Saldivar

Arthur Saldivar, Area Representative, Belize Rural North

“I commend him for the courage that he had in doing what he did and certainly I am proud of the fact that he stuck through. Whether or not we go forward, or he goes forward, or anybody else goes forward is anybody’s guess at this time. Certainly there is a need to address the corruption in this Barrow government. It’s rampant and we know it.”