Hypocrite of the Week

There was some consideration given this week to offering the award to the backwards Minister of Tourism Junior Heredia. He made some very dangerous comments recently which made many Belizeans realize, if they didn’t know it before, that racial profiling and racial stereotyping is very much a reality in our nation. We haven’t changed our mind about Heredia’s bigotry or his stupidity. But in the face of his remarks in the House today, we feel it imperative to once again single out a hypocrite second only to the PM. We refer, of course, to mini-Barrow Patrick Faber.

If many people have their wish, there will be a special place in hell for the Minister of Education. He has singlehandedly destroyed the lives of so many people because of his single-minded pettiness and hatred of anything which is PUP or affiliated with the PUP. It is frankly disquieting to hear the man-boy who stood up in the House to say that he fired single mothers and the elderly say in the next breath that his ambition is to be the Prime Minister of Belize.

This week a single mother of four visited the Belize Times to tell her story. She had been a dedicated school warden for four years when she received her termination letter just before school resumed after summer. She was told only that the Minister had other people he wanted for the job. The mother had just taken out a loan to send her two older children to high school. Without any source of income, she could not pay that loan. There are times, she told us, when she doesn’t even have food to put on the table. She does the best she can, but knows it is not enough. There are times she has wanted to give up on life, she revealed, especially when her children don’t have enough to eat and she knows from the look on their faces that they are still hungry.

Her eldest daughter has also tried to commit suicide, the mother of four told us, because things are just so hard and it is a constant struggle to even keep her in school. She has lost her home and is even now looking for somewhere to live as she tries to get by each and every day. Patrick Faber, with malicious intent, destroyed this woman’s life and has damaged an entire family. And he doesn’t care. He says that he would do it again, because that’s the political game.

This is the man who swore an oath to serve without fear or favour – the man who tells students that they should follow their dreams and never let anything keep them down.

Patrick Faber is this week’s hypocrite, and he receives that award with a sincere and heartfelt wish that all the bad that he has done to undeserving Belizeans is visited upon him multiplied tenfold.

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