Johnny Finally “Faced” the Media

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On Monday, Belize’s whimp of a Prime Minister finally fielded some questions from the media after dodging them for 109 days since he and his party the PUP were elected on November 11 last year. He fielded the questions during the launch of the government’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout. However, after witnessing his performance, perhaps most Belizeans are saying it would have been better if he had continued dodging the press, because all he did was a Millie Vanilli imitation. ‘BLAME IT ON THE UDP,’ was the theme of his interface with the media. Then there were other instances where he claimed ignorance or just spoke GIBBERISH.
However, those were not the highlights of his interface with the media. The most damning thing was when he made a thinly veiled threat to the teachers. He was asked what would happen if teachers didn’t take the vaccine. Would they be asked to resign or be removed from the system? He responded as follows, “No, I don’t think the teacher would be asked to resign, but then teacher need to be fully conscious if they decide not to take that vaccine. But then that should not prevent that teacher to teach because of the vaccine. They would have to go teach as far as I am concerned. We need to get the children back to school.”
Some teachers and other persons we spoke to are of the opinion that it was a threat by the Prime Minister, which they believe will be followed by the imposition of a rule that would mandate that only teachers who take the test are allowed to return to the classroom when distance learning comes to a close. That, they say, would not give the teachers the choice to not take the vaccine if they don’t wish to do so. At this newsroom, we believe that the decision of whether to take the Covid-19 vaccine should be a choice. We say that, although it is our belief that for us to have the best chance of battling this virus, we need to have the maximum amount of our people vaccinated.