BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Jan. 29, 2015–Michel Chebat, the attorney who had stepped down last November to make way for businessman Richard Harrison to run against the UDP’s Dr. Omar Figueroa in Cayo North on January 5, has now been installed by the Opposition People’s United Party as their man in that division for the next general elections, due in 2017.

Harrison took a two-to-one beating in the recent by-election, and Opposition Leader Francis Fonseca had indicated that they would open the candidacy to other persons.

Amandala was informed today that Chebat was endorsed as the PUP’s Cayo North candidate after a decision by the party’s executive to authorize Fonseca to execute the installation.

Julius Espat, the party’s deputy leader, who heads the PUP’s Western Caucus, told Amandala that when the caucus first voted on the matter last year, they had voted 9 in favor of Chebat and 2 for Harrison. He said that they did a round-robin to check whether the position of caucus members has changed on Chebat, and they found that again, the vote for him was virtually unanimous.

Asked why the rush to have Chebat installed without an open convention, Espat said that there is no time for a convention, since the party is heading into municipals in the next 5 weeks. They need their troops to do battle and they need a leader, he told us.

The Cayo North constituency is largely made up of voters in San Ignacio Town, the vast majority of which voted for the ruling United Democratic Party’s candidate during the recent by-election.