What is in an apology?

“Perhaps it does not understand English” thought Alice. “I daresay it’s a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.” (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything happened.) So she began again: “Ou est ma chatte?”[ English translation “where is my cat?] which was the first sentence in her French lesson book? The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. “Oh, I beg you pardon!” cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal’s feelings. “I quite forget you don’t like cats”…

“And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah. I think you would take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear quiet thing…- and she is such a nice soft thing to nurse – and she’s such a capital one for catching mice – oh, I beg your pardon!” Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

As I sat in front of the television set watching the evening news, eating a bowl of ramen noodles, my stomach turned as I watched Sedi recite his scripted version of a shotgun “apology”. Apology? One year stale but an apology right?

Yeah, he did say “My Lord I have been aware that there have been persons present in last year’s opening ceremony who took offense to some things I said in that presentation and I wish on this occasion to express my deepest regret that I was the cause of anyone on that occasion. That was never my intention and I humbly beg that any unhappy remark I made be attributed solely to inadvertence, ignorance, and perhaps inexperience.” That is what he said right?

I search myself as to why this mea culpa went down as sincerely and smoothly as swallowing broken glass. So I dusted off my Webster’s because I did not want to be dismissed with the band of ignorant cruffys who Sedi said don’t even read the dictionary. That is how I realized that Sedi’s mumblings before the Chief Justice were more in the way of “a formal justification” than it was “an expression of regret”. But, hey, after all, like Sedi said, the dictionary is manmade too. So he did “apologize”. Technically, at least.
See, I realized that an apology is not intended to work on everyone. Most people, especially Belizeans, are very reluctant to reject apologies, and those who do reject one are viewed negatively by others. This psychological fact creates social pressure to accept an apology even if it is not entirely satisfying. Politicians, therefore, only have to convince some people of their sincerity — those people will do the rest of the work.
Unfortunately, I am in the group of the “not satisfied” so I read up on a group of linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists who had begun, over the last several decades, to understand why we say “I’m sorry” and what a successful apology looks and sounds like.
Research shows that generally, politicians do bad things, they get caught, and they jiggle behind the confused shadow of an apology. For the most part, these apologies fail to satisfy anyone because, as a rule, politicians apologize very badly.
According to American anthropologist Joan Silk, “an apology is a way of returning a relationship to where it was before it was damaged. Good apologies reduce the desire for retribution, make the victim more likely to act positively towards the offender, and increase the victim’s willingness to forgive.” What is equally interesting is that she defined a successful political apology as one which minimizes the effect of the transgression in the next election by restoring a damaged relationship between a politician and voters. Eureka!!!
There it is. A good apology must contain five elements: an expression such as “I’m sorry” or “excuse me” that indicates the statement is an apology; second, an admission of responsibility; third, an offer of restitution or repair; fourth, a promise not to repeat the offense. Finally, an apology should be prompt — ideally coming before the public learns of the misbehavior or, if the transgression was public, as soon as possible after it occurred. Each element independently makes the apology more effective, so a good apology should have all of them.
I finally understood why Sedi’s “apology” was so hollow. It was not a true apology. What makes it bad is that he had a full year to doctor and rehearse it, but this was a poorly staged performance. It utterly failed to convince anyone that he was truly contrite and not sorry he got caught out and has to apologize.
Sedi’s apology failed to go beyond simply acknowledging that some people “may have been hurt ” or “may have misinterpreted” his point on that occasion. I challenge you to read it again. His apology was a qualified one and only directed to a few people. When by savagely attacking the justice system he traumatized all of Belize.
The man failed to accept full and complete responsibility for his offensive comments. In fact, the biggest thing missing from the apology was at least some meaningful form of restitution — an offer, for example, to increase the budget of the Judiciary but by their fruits you shall know them my Father likes to say. Sedi was crossing his fingers behind his back during his apology and conspiring the opposite.
Remember last year at the ceremonial opening of the Supreme Court when the Chief Justice had pleaded with Dickensian flare for “more”?. Well, in a Machiavellian response, Sedi and his Government gave him an equivocally clear assurance that he should consider cherishing his remaining trips down Treasury Lane. Apparently, their political plans for his replacement needs to be a fully red bloodied brethren, after all who can imagine the possibilities of having an impartial judge remain under this despotic UDP government. Saying “leave”, is not an apology.

In fact, as a parting gift Sedi and this UDP Government is cutting off their nose to spite their face by amputating the CJ’s financial ability to administrate over the justice system by ten percent. In an unfair, hypocritical and backhanded way, they are resolved that they want him to look bad on his way out. His offense is keeping his oath as a judge. But just ask the people of Belize whether they want Sedi or the Chief Justice to leave and every two-cent-camer will give Sedi a multiple indefinite visa for the other side of his artificial border.

Now, the Chief Justice’s diplomacy may have finessed his sincere cries over the heads of most casual news watchers when he warned that the Government’s devaluation of the Court’s financial allocation could endanger the administration of justice to the extent of crippling it. Yeah, in small change it means ten percent more chance that murderers, home invaders and grenade shot-putters are on your street. This is surely the best apology ever.

That apology was at best tepid, unconvincing, and rightly derided.

Taken together, these flaws make Sedi’s apology almost completely useless. Truth is Sedi doesn’t do apologies. His political career is on death row after conviction for charges of molestation to our territorial integrity and aggravated assault to our national intelligence. His apology to the Chief Justice is as good as his apology to the country for calling the borders artificial.
But this is his loss because a real apology is not always enough to resuscitate a career, but a notional one certainly isn’t helpful.

I will tell you the reason he apologized to the Chief Justice; and it was because either he had to publicly apologize for a local political fart or let the world know he made an international boo boo. This is the case of a choice between confessing to be the village idiot or admitting to be a world class fool. Sedi Elrington’s pride and geography learnings made him choose to say “my bad” for local political flatulence released in the face to the Supreme Court of Belize but not “I was wrong” to protect the reality of our borders to a listening International Court of Justice.

We the people of Belize apologize and ask you, Mr. Sedi in Wonderland, to please, tender an artificial resignation.

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