FM Elrington Says It’s Crazy Not to Support Yes Vote in Referendum

Elrington was further grilled about the campaign. He took off the Foreign Minister’s hat and spoke as citizen Elrington.  According to him, you have to be crazy not to support a yes vote. His rationale is that having resisted for almost a century, Guatemala is now saying yes to the ICJ and this presents a chance in a lifetime to head to the Hague.

Wilfred ‘Sedi’ Elrington

Wilfred ‘Sedi’ Elrington, Foreign Affairs Minister

“In my view, and here I am not going to be politically correct. But if you are threatened by a huge neighbor for over a hundred years and you do not think that that threat should be put behind you once and for all in a peaceful way and in the most acceptable way known to humanity, then something has got to be crazy with you. If you do not understand the importance of a yes vote in this kind of circumstance especially given the fact that this is an existential issue, this is not a game that we are playing. This is not an issue where we have a second or third chance; this is one chance. You know how long it took us to get to this point? Almost a hundred years. Are we going to blow it and is there anybody who is offering any rational, valid reason why we should want to blow it? You gotta be crazy. That’s how I see it. Now I am not speaking as Foreign Minister as I am speaking as Wilfred Elrington who has spent the better part of six decades fighting to have this Belize/Guatemala issue resolved.  The British invited them to go to the I.C.J. from the 1930’s. We never waivered from that position; I never one day thought that we had any better solution than going to the I.C.J. so I have always supported that position. And so it is for that reason that as soon as we got into office in 2008 where we discovered here was an opportunity to go to the I.C.J., we did not hesitate at all, at all, at all.”