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Earlier, you heard Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley speak with uncommon boldness and candor about why he supports the PUP in their call for a Senate Inquiry – and why he does not support the Prime Minister’s alternative, which is a joint select committee.  And you also heard him discuss corruption in public life and amongst elected officials.  But corruption is not so easy to root out: first, it’s hard to prove definitively, and when you’re dealing with elected officials, they can’t be so easily fired because they have a mandate.  The mayor himself learned this when former Deputy Mayor Eric Chang was caught right up in the middle of the Citizen Kim scenario.  The Auditor General’s report reproduced an email form the then Ambassador Cherie Nisbet which showed that Chang was pressing every angle to get Kim’s passport situation regularized, and he even sought to use his office as deputy Mayor to visit Kim in a detention facility.  But for all that Chang still served out his term as a city councillor.  Today we asked the mayor about that:

Jules Vasquez
"He told the ambassador by her account Cherie Nisbet if the Taiwanese called and check; confirm that I am the deputy Mayor showing that he was trying to use this office within your council to ply influence over there to try and visit Citizen Kim."

Darrell Bradley - Mayor Belize City
"Any person who does or engages in those kind of activities to the detriment of the public interest that is something that is criminal, that is something that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

"I am not going to say that every politician is perfect, I am not going to say that Darrell Bradley is perfect but we must draw a line between discharging your functions that reaches a standard of acceptability and the conduct that is mentioned in some parts of the report which is shameless, which is criminal, which needs to be investigated and which need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law without hesitation."

Jules Vasquez
"When you knew Eric Chang came back, he attended council events; you didn't eject him from the council, you didn't say bwai you can't come ya, yo name stink and yo di stink up my name; he was the deputy mayor. So you were directly linked with someone who is involved in this and it shows how difficult it is because the man had a mandate, people vote fi ah."

Darrell Bradley - Mayor Belize City
"I want to address that head on, when Eric Chang came back to this jurisdiction even before he landed on this plane he was no longer deputy mayor because I had him removed as deputy mayor because we will stand for no type of corruption in this office. The difficulty is if Eric Chang is elected as a councillor I as the mayor, I cannot remove him. There is no power to remove a sitting councillor in my hands. There are certain things which were mentioned in the Belize City Council act that the Election and Boundaries commission can do that other offices in the country can do that steps the integrity commission can take and where those steps were enacted I indicated to those bodies that we will cooperate with them to the fullest extent of the law but what I could have done as mayor in relation to holding him account I did."

And while the Mayor took a hardline today – he didn’t quiet tow the same line back in June of 2014 – nine months after the Citizen Kim episode.  At that time when we asked him about Change, he gave quite a stout defence of the embattled, disgraced councillor:

Mayor Darrell Bradley - Belize City Mayor
"The Eric Chang that I know and I have dealt with over two years and four months is a worker. Be careful when you use language like what you have used against a person who my experience has been, is a tireless public servant and a person who has been a councillor and in my view has served the city well. The person who makes the ultimate decision whether or not Eric Chang is worthy to serve the people of Belize is not Darrell Bradley, its not the Prime Minister, it will be you. The electorate in this city will make a decision."

Again, those remarks were from June of 2014.  Chang never offered himself at another UDP Municipal convention.