Penner Not Off the Hook after Testimony

Elvin Penner

There is no love lost between former Minister of State Elvin Penner and Citizens Organized for Liberty through Action. In 2014 and 2015, COLA pressed for Penner to be indicted on two criminal charges related to the Won Hong Kim case. But they got no help from the Police Department, who had a file in relation to the case, and lost the original matter at Magistrate’s Court and a subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court. It must have been galling, then, for COLA’s members to have heard Penner invoke the hearings in his defense against further testimony on what he knows of Kim. President Geovannie Brackett said as much today, but opined that Penner still remains as guilty in their eyes now as he was then and that he remains a disgrace to Belize.

Geovannie Brackett

Geovannie Brackett, President, COLA

“Mr. Middleton and there were others who have refused to answer questions – they were never taken to court. Mr. Penner would have dodged those questions any which way; it is up to the inquiry and the Senate to best probe and to get him to talk – because at some points they got him to speak – and it is the skilfulness of their ability to ask questions that will enable them to probe better and deeper. In fact I think that Penner knew that he would have been drilled even further more, so he brought his thugs with him to the House to save him, because he knows that he was being embarrassed on the national scene and we, Belize, are being embarrassed on the international scene because of Mr. Penner. Remember, there are so many, thousands of passports gone missing and we don’t even know if they are in the hands of terrorists. This inquiry is a very serious one that actually can have serious international implications. So Penner is just trying to be wise and to be cunning, but the world is looking at him, and Belize is looking at him, and when we see him, he may have won legally, but in the court of public opinion, he is guilty, and for us that will never change.”