“Tell dat to yuh pa”

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Last week Friday Kareem Musa barked up the wrong tree, and he got just what he was searching for. During the debate on a motion for a 50 million dollar loan, Kareem tried to defend his recent trip to Communist Mainland China, but he was stopped from doing so because the rules of the house are that members should contain their presentations to the motion being debated at the time. He was reminded by the speaker that he could speak to that or any other matter he chose to speak on at the time of the motion for adjournment.

In winding up the debate, the Prime Minister was given the opportunity to respond because Kareem had brought up the matter and in fairness to the Prime Minister it was fitting for him to respond and the Prime Minister spoke about the risk of practicing duplicitous diplomacy. He said, that we need to know how somebody who is a neophyte in diplomacy, a novice in matters of state, has had the hubris to decide, perhaps, entirely without the concurrence or leave of his party that he can be some sort of master of state-craft.

On the motion, for the adjournment, Kareem got up and somehow thought he could lock horns with the Prime Minister. He did so rather than acknowledging the error of him going on that visit to Communist Mainland China. He got up and did his old overused song and dance routine about being invited unofficially but not as a member of the People’s United Party, although there were other members of the party there and that he was also not as a member of ‘your government,’ so there was no need to worry about diplomatic relations. He went on to say, that the PM did not have to worry about any risk. Kareem added that the PM wanted Belizeans to bury their heads in the sand like Ostridge and being afraid of facing the world that is in front of us, that would make our generation a bunch of cowards. Then he got outright disrespectful when he told the Prime Minister. “You are out of touch Mr. Prime Minister, you are old, you are tired, it is time for you to go.”

There was where Kareem really got into trouble. The Prime Minister got up and responded and gave him the spanking his father should have given to him a long time ago. He told Kareem the following: “As to being old and tired, well how old is old, I am 68 years old and proud of it, but the bottom line is this: when you talk about who old and tired and don’t want to go, you should talk to your father, it is he you should be talking to. If I am 68, he must be 76, and he is announcing that he still will run again in Fort George. That is what is old and tired and needs to go.”

“Sir, the media and the public saw a press release that Mr. Johnston Ou issued officially in which he calls you a liar. Now you turn around and you say that Johnston Ou liad. Then explain to me how you, a member of this national assembly accepts an invitation from Johnston Ou, and furthermore the sense that we have is this was an all-expense trip that you went on. You accept an invitation according to you from Johnston Ou ,who turns around and says you are a liar and all you can do is to say it’s not you who are liad, and he is liad? Well, what business you had in accepting a trip from Johnston OU, who you now condemned as clearly a figure that cannot be trusted. What does that say about your judgement? But, you are a member of the party representing the party in the national assembly, so you are a member of the PUP and you are a member of the national assembly and you are a member of the national government of Belize. You cannot go on an all-expenses paid trip at the invitation which you say came through Johnston Ou, but which Johnston Ou comes from some Quasi government agency, some regional arm of the Chinese government. You can’t accept that and come here and tell us and tell the people of Belize you have nothing to answer for, because you went as Kareem Musa. Did you pay for it? They paid for it. They sponsored you.”

“As I told that trip has to have taken because you went on your knees. You, what is the problem though and when you came back you didn’t say a word. You didn’t say a word to anybody until you made the media know that you had gone on this miraculous, on this trip to China, where you had this great epiphany, you discovered how you deal with poverty alleviation. You didn’t say a word, it was when they caught you, it’s then you bawl and then you start to talk about that Johnston Ou invited you. You knew that what you had done was wrong and you were trying to hide it. Talk about hypocrisy. Look, I have spoken off the record to people in your party and I know that your trip was unauthorized, unsanctioned and unapproved.”