Musa: U.D.P. racism won’t sell with voters

While Elrington’s remarks may have been confusing to some politicians there was one who got the message loud and clear.

Said Musa, Leader, P.U.P.

“It’s a very insidious thing that they have introduced into our politics. Yes, I do come from, on my father’s side, of Arab ancestry. My mother is a born Belizean, all her life. Her ancestry, her father, her grandfather in fact was one of the historians of then British Honduras, Mr. Archibald Gibbs. So my credentials as a Belizean, I was born here. The Belizean people know that. So it is not going to work.

And this attempt to divide our people along racial lines will be thoroughly rejected by the voters of this country. Belize is not a country where a people will give in to this kind of thing. They have seen the dangers of racial slurs, of racism in the political life of a country. They have seen what happened to Guyana years ago. And they see what is happening today in so many parts of the world where ethnicity becomes the focal issue. So this last minute attempt to introduce racism into our politics will be thoroughly rejected by the Belizean voter.”

The playing of the race card by the United Democratic Party did not come as a total surprise nor is it the work of a lone rogue minister. A perusal of the U.D.P.’s Pulse newspaper reveals an increased anti-Arab bias over the last six months. In one issue the paper went so far as to condemn the alleged ascendancy of Arabs in the P.U.P. while a few pages later it loudly applauded the generosity of the Arab leaders of Kuwait for providing the funds for the expansion of the international airport.