Sedi Elrington clarifies his “artificial border” comment…

Prime Minister Dean Barrow said today that his Foreign Minister is safe at home and that he did not intend to remove Wilfred Elrington from Cabinet for his use of the word artificial in describing the established borders between Belize and Guatemala. But the Prime Minister conceded that Elrington should have perhaps apologized for his statement made to a reporter from the Organization of American States in the margins of a meeting with his Guatemalan counterpart in Washington in mid December. Elrington, however, was not of the same mind when he was asked on our morning show about his choice of words.

Marleni Cuellar
“Do you have any regrets about using that particular term in the way that you did?”

Wilfred “Sedi” Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
“No… no and let me clarify. I am saddened by the fact that such a simple word used in that context, was misconstrued in that way by a media house because really and truly this was really done by a media house and my view is that the media’s responsibility should be to educate and inform; not to seek to distort honesty. That disappointed me but I was also somewhat brought up by the fact that there were some people in Belize who genuinely did not know that the word artificial meant, among other things, manmade. I was surprised about the amount of people who didn’t know that, so to that extent I said that maybe I should have used another expression. The problem that was created was that the suggestion by the media house that I was somehow a traitor and that I was betraying Belize by using the expression and that was pumped to the people over and over and over and people who like to think that they are opinion makers in Belize and like to think that they are a monopoly of knowledge, some of them I think believe they are omniscient, they know everything; these are the people who came forward and said that the use of this expression by Sedi suggests that he is not worthy of being a foreign minister and that he should be removed by the prime minister. I spoke to the prime minister about this matter on Thursday morning after the news came out. If he had thought that what I did was wrong or harmful to the people of Belize or to the nation of Belize, he would have had no hesitation to remove me. If I were of the view that what I did was wrong, dangerous and harmful to the people of Belize I would resign.”