SPEAR poll spells hope for third party
The Society for the Promotion of Education and Research (SPEAR) released the results of a recent poll yesterday, indicating that just over half of the persons interviewed would vote neither for the Opposition, United Democratic Party, nor for the ruling People’s United Party.
Via telephone, SPEAR got the opinions of 400 Belizeans. They say that they are 95% confident that their results reflect the opinion of the wider population.
Amandala got the reaction of spokespersons of three political parties—the UDP, the PUP, and the VIP – Vision Inspired by the People, which contested the municipal elections this March with historic results, garnering 19.5% of votes in Belmopan City.
Hubert Enriquez, one of VIP’s founders, told Amandala that the SPEAR survey is “right on the button.”
While Enriquez had yet to study the full details of the poll, he commented: “We have always known that that is how people feel. We’re not quite surprised. We’re encouraged by it. It will provide some momentum for 2008.”
That’s when the next general elections are due, but 62.5% of survey respondents think that elections should be called within the next six months, meaning by next April. A year ago, in October 2005, 71.6% of 388 respondents said the Prime Minister should call early elections.
From our interviews with them today, it is evident that all three political parties will be analyzing and trying to make use of the SPEAR poll, but their interpretations of what exactly the results mean, of course, will differ.
UDP chairman Doug Singh told Amandala that his party is still analyzing the poll results.
“We cannot dismiss this kind of a poll,” said Singh. “If we look at the poll they did prior to March 2006, the results were somewhat consistent with the polls they conducted. Any political party would be stupid to dismiss it.”
Last October, SPEAR did the first poll, which indicated that the Prime Minister’s approval rating was 19.8%. This new poll said his approval rating has slipped down to 15.1%.
Yasser Musa, public relations officer of the PUP, told Amandala that the Prime Minister’s rating is more significant in a presidential system (where there is direct vote for the leader of the country) than in a parliamentary system (where the P.M. is the leader of the party that gets the most votes).
Musa, who happens to be the son of Prime Minister Hon. Said Musa, said that looking back at the results of the recent municipal elections, the Prime Minister’s division is the only division that garnered majority votes for the PUP in Belize City—this despite very low approval ratings for the Prime Minister in the SPEAR poll.
The 2005 poll was designed to determine how Belizeans would respond in the event of early elections. The survey came out of last year’s wave of public protests and calls from various quarters for the current administration to resign.
Three out of the five questions SPEAR posed were in the context of early elections, including the question of whether Belizeans would vote blue (PUP) or red (UDP).
Notably, 49% of Belizeans in the 2005 poll said that Belizeans would vote for a third party, if general elections were called early. Sixty-five point seven percent (65.7%) said they would vote for the UDP in the event of early elections and 34.5% said PUP.
Five months later, municipal election results reflected similar sentiments. 60% of voters across the country, based on Elections and Boundaries Commission statistics, voted for the UDP and 39% voted for the PUP.
Noteworthy is that fact that the 2005 poll showed far more promise for a third party than was realized in municipals. Across the nation, only 1.5% voted for a third party – either the VIP in Belmopan (which got 19.5% of votes), the We the People Reform Movement in Corozal (which got 4.4%), and the National Alliance for Belizean Rights in Belize City (which got 0.2%). A miniscule proportion (about 0.2%) voted for independent candidates.
This year’s poll doesn’t beat around the bush like last year’s. It asked more direct questions about the voting decisions of respondents, as opposed to what they think other Belizeans will do when voting time comes.
The 2006 poll was constituted as follows:
Q1: Do you approve or disapprove of the way the mayor is managing your municipality?
(Answers were favorable in all cases except for Punta Gorda—the only municipality with a PUP mayor.)
Q2: Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Prime Minister is leading the country?
Q3: Do you agree or disagree that the Prime Minister should call general elections within the next six months?
Q4: If general elections were called within the next six months, would you lean towards voting for a PUP, UDP or THIRD PARTY Government?
Q5: Would you support a law that requires all political parties to disclose their sources of campaign finance?
(The poll results show that 81.4% of respondents want to know who’s paying the piper; 10.3% are for no disclosure and 8.3% said they had no opinion on the matter.)
A closer look at the results indicates that Prime Minister has the highest opinion rating in Toledo (32.3%), where respondents are not satisfied with the performance of the PUP mayor.
Overall, 14.4% expressed no opinion and 70.5% disapprove of the way Mr. Musa is leading the country, contrasting against 80.2% last year.
One of the resounding sentiments expressed in the months leading up to last year’s survey was discontent among many Belizeans. One placard in a protest march epitomized that feeling with the words: “Said, wi noh happy!”
“We as a political party must pay attention to all polls that are put out,” said Yasser Musa, the PUP’s PR officer.
He added that despite the challenges they have faced, it is revealing to the PUP that the UDP couldn’t even garner more than 32%, indicating that they are not a viable option.
Musa noted that if the results of the poll were to be taken as true, it means that a large amount of voters are alienated.
The poll indicates that 11.1% of Belizeans would vote for no party, 17.1% are undecided, and 22.9% want a third party. This makes a total of 51.1%.
Singh, the UDP’s chair, said the results regarding the third party require a tremendous focus, as does the large amounts of undecided votes.
“The UDP has to focus on this population: both the undecided and independents,” he said. “We need to understand what are the most important issues to the people.”
Both Musa and Singh said that their parties would do their own on-the-ground assessments between now and general elections.
Musa noted that under law it is the Prime Minister’s call whether or not there will be early elections. Singh said that all indications are that elections won’t come early.
That will give both sides plenty of time to try to swing the pendulum in their favor, but clearly, if the results of the poll were to be taken to be truly reflective of wider public sentiment, the PUP have a lot more work on their hands than the UDP. The UDP received almost triple the amount of favorable votes than the PUP did, and the third party—which notably has no face and no name in the survey—collected more than twice the PUP’s endorsements.
The next elections coming up are the village council elections in early 2007, informed Singh.
Musa said that their work leading to the 2008 elections would be with the thousands of voters in each division. They need 17 seats in general elections to form the next government, he noted.
He said that his party tries to look at every election as a new election, and the task is to try to win the hearts and minds of the people.
For the UDP, said Singh, the task is to do their own probing to understand what are the most important issues to the people and build on the information they garner to establish their political platform.
The UDP is confident that the SPEAR poll is another strong indictment of the Prime Minister and, by extension, his administration, because Musa is the front-runner in the party.
Singh said that while the UDP thinks the PUP should call early elections, it is unlikely that they will.
“There are some indicators that suggest that the Government may be stretching it,” he concluded.