A week ago, we told you about Minister of State Edmond Castro, the Area Rep for Belize Rural North, who had to face a court challenge brought by one of his constituents, Trevor Vernon. He believed that Castro had violated the Cabinet code of conduct. Castro's attorney, Denys Barrow, managed to get the case thrown out on the technicality that Vernon made an error when he started a public law claim instead of going the private law route.
Vernon was slapped with a $5,000 cost of court which Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin ordered that he pay to Castro for legal fees. That basically meant that Vernon had to pay Denys Barrow for defending Castro.
So today, Vernon showed up to Barrow's law office on Coney Drive with two pillow cases filled with what he says is half the money.
You might suspect that he was taking this matter "mek papishow" because he was forcing the persons receiving the money to count out $2,500 in small change. He told us today that it was nothing like that; this it was a contribution from people in Belize Rural North who supported that he was challenging Castro's actions as a sitting Minister. Here's how he explained it:
Trevor Vernon, Unsuccessful Claimant
"Those two pillowcases contain one thousand two hundred and fifty each in small money because we were raising monies on Facebook and people came and contributed. They didn't all bring shillings, but we just wanted the thing to be uniform so we got all shillings."
Mike Rudon, Ch5
"What's the symbolism of that?"
Trevor Vernon, Unsuccessful Claimant
"The symbolism of it is people will take it how they want. It's just that with friends we literally had to go out and raise pennies, so we were only able to put together twenty-five hundred today. Hopefully within the next week, the way the donations are coming in…a lot of small donations…dollar, five dollars, ten dollars…people literally breaking their piggy banks because they support what they are seeing happening and of course I am happy to have people see this not as something frivolous and trivial but as an important development in our whole system of governance. I think I was being kind doing it this way, not any kind of sour grapes, anything at all."
Vernon says that he will be making the next half of the payment by next week. He'll have to include an extra $10 dollars and 50 cents in that second payment because that's how much he was short in today's amount, according to Denys Barrow.
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