…Grassroots Organization Condemns Temporary Restriction on Sarstoon Travel

Geovanni Brackett

Brackett says COLA is prepared to go a couple steps further than condemnation by calling for a national shutdown. He told News Five that “For far too long Belize has lacked true leadership as it relates to this issue and it is time for the citizens of Belize to rise up and demand better.”

Geovanni Brackett, President, COLA

“I think it’s definitely time as you would see in our release for us to shut this country down. I don’t see how ay union president, I don’t see any N.G.O. that is in their right mind that will not rise up against this. I think that there are a lot of corrected measures that could have taken place before the Prime Minister’s oppress conference and I think one of the things that the Prime Minister should have done was to set a delegation to meet with the territorial volunteers to have a discourse in closed doors and could have come out with a much better solution. It could have never settle right if the PM went there and used the medium such a s this press conference to speak at the territorial volunteers; that is not a dialogue. That is more like a monologue and it comes across almost dictatorial that you are speaking to this group saying don’t go out there. I mean you are rehearsing the same verse you have been rehearsing and what you should have done was actually set the delegation and meet with them before the press conference so when you have the press conference it’s more a collaborative effort on behalf of the government with the citizen. I think this have stretched so far out of reach that we are just messing up both on the international scene; we have failed to capitalize internationally. Guatemala is ahead of us in terms of the media, I can’t understand why the head of the press office or the government of Belize could not call the same news media agency that ran the side of the Guatemalan story to say hear what, you have gotten their side, we want to give our side. I think that is the kind of leadership that we lack and that we need in this country. I believe that I could go on the record to say COLA is far beyond upset and I think this is definitely a cause for a strike, a cause for a protest. If you notice I am not being emotional because I want that to be very clear that we will stand alongside Wil Maheia to the very end and if we are going to be locked up for taking a position then so be it. But this day the government of Belize needs to choose who he will serve. If it will be Belize or a foreign interest.”