Stephen Okeke's bust of legendary labour agitator Antonio Soberanis – it's a major, definitive work, but the grandeur of the piece has been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding it.
Oddly, most of the controversy has been generated by Okeke himself, whose ego – and wallet – appeared for a while to have been mortally wounded by the City Council's apparent indifference towards his Great Work.
He wanted them to rush in and scoop up the pricey piece, but the Council has its own pace, and after weeks of negotiation on a final price, they finally got around to signing a contract yesterday. It is news because it pushes back the opening of the park – which was planned for tomorrow – to the 19th of September. During that time, the bust will be installed and paid for. The Mayor told us how they arrived at a compromise:…
Darrell Bradely – Mayor of Belize City
"Yesterday I signed an agreement with Mr. Okeke for the purchasing of the bust and we're buying the bust from him for $25,000 and we are closing this deal on the 6th of September which is next week Friday. I am also pleased to report that we're not spending public funds on this bust, that's monies that have been fully donated to the City Council and we had a lot of interest from people wanting to contribute to the acquisition of the bust. What we've done is that we had a campaign really to try and go out to the members of the business community and also our friends like the Belize Tourism Board and Belize Electricity Limited to indicate to us what our proposal was to the restoration of the park and how they could contribute. I'm thankful that they have come out in droves to indicate that their contributions would amount to the entire acquisition of the bust. The logistics of that is going to be worked out very shortly and the bust will be erected next week and then we will have a closing during the September Celebrations."
We understand the final price for the piece is $25,000 dollars.
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