And Faber also discussed the recent Queen of the Bay crowning controversy. As minister of Culture, he's the chairman of the September Celebrations Commission - and he's also the person who chairperson of the Queen of the Bay Committee Zenaida Moya has implicated as the trouble maker leading up to the fiasco on the Tenth.
Today Faber said he won't respond to the insults - except to say that the Queen of the Bay is for everybody, not Ms. Moya:...
Hon. Patrick Faber, Chairman - September Celebrations Commission
"I stress that in fact we did not decide on who the Queen of the Bay was; the judges ultimately did that, along with the then reigning queen. It is unfortunate the circumstances that have happened. In fact, you know that there were personal attacks made against me, I will not get into that. I think we should rise above the fray. I think that in fact was a red herring to try to move us away from the real issues. What I can assure people of, though, is that moving forward, ah, we all in this country I think will agree that the Queen of the Bay Pageant is something that is a national treasure. It is not something to be owned by any one individual or one particular group. It is my understanding and I have been able to confirm in fact that there have been moves on the part of Ms., Moya to register the name of the queen of the bay, which, I think is absolutely continuing to go further against the wishes of the people of this country."
"The Queen of the Bay is a queen that reigns over all of Belize and not parts of Belize. The unfortunate thing, of course that has come out of all of this and I need to say this, that, ah, we're not taking sides. A lot of nasty racism and political bias and quarrels have come out of all of this, and that is very unfortunate and I appeal at this time for us to let it go, let us move forward."
We'll have a response from Maya to that allegation in our next segment.
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