And this latest ceremony will be one of the last that Chargé d' Affairs, Keith Gilges will be attending. That's because his term in Belize ends in four months. Gilges assumed office on July 24th, 2018 and during that time he's become well known for his dapper diplomacy.
But in July of this year, Gilges will be packing up and heading to another posting. Today, we got a few final words from him.
Keith Gilges - Charge d' Affairs "My tour is limited to three years so it's not that I want to go but my successor's already been chosen and she's eager to get here so yeah so July is when I say goodbye to Belize for one final time. Although I don't know we said something about maybe citizenship on retirement…? Is that a possibility. (laughs). I'm proud of the work that the embassy's done and I joked in the speech oftentimes I get the thank you, like oh you know Keith you've done a great job here, well, no, the team has done a great job in partnership with everyone here. I'm the one that gets to walk out front and stand between the flags and give the speech but ultimately, I'm just leading a team of people that rebuilding this broad partnership and that's really what it's about. No matter who our leaders are, the work happens, and it's just an investment because there is this natural affinity between the people of Belize and the people of the US, we just fit together really well. And so, it is been an incredible honour, it has been the honour of my career to get to serve for these two and a half and ultimately three years as charge. We do look forward to the administration appointing an ambassador and somebody coming in soon, I don't have any news on that yet but I know that ambassadors are actively under consideration by the administration so hopefully sometime in the fall you'll get a proper ambassador here."
Belize's last US Ambassador was Carlos Moreno, back in 2017.
