BELIZE CITY, Wed. Jan. 24, 2018– The massive Civic Center building with its 4,500-seating capacity that was built at a cost of 33 million dollars was recently featured in an advertisement by the United Democratic Party (UDP) Belize City Council slate, in which one councilor candidate claimed that it was the City Council which built the structure.

That however, is a falsehood.

In advertising the accomplishments of the UDP City Council, the councilor candidate and incumbent, Jason Edwards, standing in front of the Belize City Center, declared: “We have rehabilitated community parks and playgrounds and built a brand new Civic Center for your recreation and pleasure.”

Edwards, who was elected for the first time to City Hall in 2015, is a protegé of Mark King, the one-term defeated UDP Lake Independence area representative who famously said: “…But, of course with any mass political party, you look after UDP first, you look after Belizeans second and you look after PUP last. I straight up like that, I noh got nothing fi hide from di media.”

King also gained notoriety for declaring that not only would he win his seat in Lake Independence in the snap general elections for 2015; he would bring down Kremandala and its chairman, Evan X. Hyde. He later lost badly to the PUP’s Cordel Hyde, and thereafter became a political non-entity.

Why should a serving City Councilor who is running for a second term employ false advertising, clearly aimed at deceiving voters by taking credit for a project as monumental as the Civic Center City?

This morning, Amandala asked the outgoing Belize City Mayor, Darrell Bradley, what role his City Council played in the building of the Civic Center.

Bradley replied, “The Civic Center was built by the National Sports Council. It was not a City Council project. Though there was some consultation with the city on some aspects of it, we did not execute the building of it.”