Elrington to Coye: Sober up!
It was a vintage performance by a veteran politician… one who by his own admission has been nothing if not consistent in his views. Minister of Local Government, Hubert Elrington, took the opportunity to respond to accusations made yesterday by Belize City Mayor Jose Coye that government had unreasonably withheld over a hundred thousand dollars in subvention funds to the City. After implying that his lordship was both an alcoholic and a scoundrel the minister went on to make the rather strange assertion that the withholding of funds was somehow not political.
Hubert Elrington, Minister of Local Government
“Politics, politics, politics and hardly in my view any substance at all. He seems to believe that his subvention has not been paid to him or to his council because we want to be arbitrary or dictatorial or we want to be political. That is not so. The truth of the matter is that we have had many requests from all the councils, which happen to be at the time to be P.U.P. councils for a subvention to be paid in advance. And there are many of the boards that are two three months in advance of their subventions. This is standard practice; we give them subventions to tie them over and to ensure that they can get out of their financial difficulties as a matter of course. As soon as the request comes to me I would normally put a no objection notice on it and send it over to the Ministry of Finance. But there are a number of things that is going wrong at the Belize City Council and seriously wrong.”
Among the many complaints cited by Elrington was what he called the illegal raising of city property taxes, with the assessment based on rental value instead of market value. He advised land owners to challenge their tax bills in court until the mayor complies with the law. Another criticism involved the mayor’s firing of financial controller Shaun Gordon, a move which cost the city a two hundred thousand-dollar court judgement. He also cited Coye’s refusal to take over the running of fire and ambulance services as set out under the new infrastructure project agreement. But the minister’s biggest beef was with what he called the Mayor’s pork barrel projects in the Caribbean Shores area. Saying that Coye had spent the bulk of the Council’s money on projects to help him in his quest to get elected to the National Assembly in Caribbean Shores Elrington challenged him to show where all the money had been spent.
Hubert Elrington
“The truth of the matter is that if he can produce the Council’s work program, if he can give us a comparative analysis of what he has done in one division and what he has done in the other divisions in relation to the paving and putting in of drains etc. then we can juxtapose those together – four, five of them. And just by glancing at them we can see whether this mayor is a hypocrite or whether this mayor is an honest straightforward, caring person.”
While he was at it the minister also took the opportunity to introduce his brother Wilfred, the attorney representing the Social Security Board in its civil suit against the Courtenays. The lawyer assured the assembled journalists that the judgement, which has been entered for over three million dollars in favor of his clients, will not be set aside. He implied that the weight of justice was so heavily on his side that any other outcome would be unthinkable. Third billing on the afternoon matinee went to Michael Godoy, the former U.D.P. standard bearer in Fort George, who has just been appointed by Minister of Broadcasting Elrington to be the new head of a newly constituted Belize Broadcasting Authority. After all the political hullabaloo over the City Council and Countenay lawsuit dies down it is this act by the minister which may have the most long lasting effects. Godoy promised to meet with broadcasters and the media to straighten out the long running mess in the industry and hopefully prepare it for the new millennium. One final point, almost lost in today’s press conference, was that in the end Minister Elrington admitted that tomorrow morning he will release the subvention to the City Council in the hope that the mayor will comply with the minister’s many requests.
