COLA Writes Open Letter to National Assembly

Geovanni Brackett

COLA is tonight ramping up its ongoing campaign to have Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington removed from office immediately, to start construction of a forward operating base on Sarstoon Island and revisit all standing agreements with Guatemala.  The organization has written an open letter to individual members of the National Assembly, including the clerk, to apprise them of their position.  Recent issues with the Guatemalan military, as well as an apparent breakdown in diplomatic communications have prompted COLA to continue its sensitization efforts.  News Five spoke with President Geovanni Brackett earlier today.

Geovanni Brackett, President, COLA

“Our executive has decided that we should write an official letter to each member of the House, to the speaker and the relevant bodies for one major reason, we have a wide membership and supporters; those who aren’t necessarily members but supporters of COLA and they come from constituencies throughout this country.  They have issued their support for our campaign and we thought that the members of the House who represent these constituents ought to be abreast of our campaign officially and that they should give an official comment as individual members of those constituencies.  You know in the U.S. you could write your congressman or your senator in order to express your position so that that senator or that congressman can speak on your behalf.  I think in Belize too many times we have members of the House speaking on the party’s position rather than having them speak on members of their constituencies, their voters.  We are running a national campaign to build this base at the Sarstoon effective now rather than in the near future and we see the urgency of dealing with this Guatemala, this Belize/Guatemala unfounded claim and we at COLA are calling attention to the members of these constituencies individually so that we want them to come with their position.  We have heard Boots Martinez give sentiments that he believes that we have the right to traverse our borders and from what I’ve understood from him, he even supports building a base.  We’ve heard from Major Lloyd Jones, he’s not a member of the House but he’s an aspirant.  And so what we are calling for are other members like those to not to be caught up in the internal and the external political issue but to take time out on national issues.  I think that we don’t want to be seen as just get the Honorable Sedi Elrington out of the House like we’re doing the job for Dr. Smith.  Doctor Smith needs to do the job for himself as well and to issue a release and deal with the Guatemala issue rather than just hearing him on P.U.P. internal politics.  And that’s real talk.  COLA is not here to fight any political party issue but we want each individuals that are representing our members who are voters in their constituencies to give a position or to take a pole at the very least to know what are their constituents position on moving forward in building the base, removing Minister Elrington as Foreign Affairs Minister and reviewing and revisiting our agreements, current bilateral agreements with Guatemala.  That is our position.”