New National Awards Proposed to Honour Courage and Patriotism

When pilot Howard Grange showed extraordinary bravery during a hijacked domestic flight last year, the country wanted to honor him properly. But according to Prime Minister John Briceño, the existing national awards system offered few suitable options. Today, government moved to fix that. The prime minister introduced an amendment to the National Honours and Awards Act to create two new awards: The Order of National Pride and Patriotism Excellence and The Award of Valor. With the September celebrations approaching, Briceño says the new honors will give Belize a stronger and more fitting way to recognize courage, patriotism and outstanding national service.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“As we all know, it was last year in April when we had a person with serious mental issues trying to hijack one of our planes, a local flight. We believe back then that Mr. Howell Grange acted with incredible bravery. He remained calm at all times and played out with this person, letting him Believe that the plane is going to the U.S. Talking in Spanish to let him think the plane was in Mexico’s airspace. And, it required incredible bravery, incredible calm and to be cool during that time and even at the risk of his own life. I think he was stabbed a few times. But because of his act of bravery he managed to save all of the lives of the people in that plane. So when we wanted to give him a special award to recognize his bravery, there is nothing with the different medal we have to fit him in with what he had done.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

Watch the full newscast here: