The municipal elections are only days away, and one of the most hotly contested races will be the battle for the mayoral seat in Belize City – the municipality which has been the center of a political maelstrom, with what seems like never-ending allegations about unscrupulous spending from the public purse, while critical bills fail to be met. These are the salient issues being kept on the front burner as electors prepare to cast their votes on Wednesday, March 4.
Today, Amandala interviewed both the incumbent mayor, Zenaida Moya, leading the slate for the ruling United Democratic Party, and her challenger, Cecil “Chubby” Reneau, leading the slate for the Opposition, People’s United Party.
Taking a major diversion from the Caribbean Shores campaign trail, Chubby Reneau visited our newspaper this morning. He told us that he was actually one of thousands who voted for Moya in 2006, but now he feels divinely inspired to go after her seat, in light of what he describes as unhappy sentiments expressed to him about the state of Belize’s Old Capital and the center of commerce.
For her part, the embattled Mayor Moya says that while the allegations of financial wrongdoing have taken a great toll on her and her family, she will stay in the fight, because as the first woman to have held that position she refuses to go down as a one-term mayor.
Her challenger, Chubby Reneau, says that while both have come out of the public service, he has held varied managerial posts.
“Throughout my working life, whether I am managing a project or working out of an administrative office, I had made it my personal quest to help those around me to grow,” Reneau told us.
From 1992 to 1998, he served as principal of the now defunct Belize Technical College. Before that, he was education officer and director for vocational and technical education.
He entered the service at the age of 18 as a craft teacher at the bottom of the pay-scale and had served for a time as Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, under the term of Said Musa, while Cordel Hyde, Lake I Area Representative, was the Minister of Education.
The challenger, Reneau, told us that he had also managed a USAID funded project that brought about the first Center for Employment Training in Belize.
We asked Reneau: What made you decide to enter the race for City Hall? He says that it all leads back to service, and he believes he is being called to serve in a different capacity.
Why the PUP? Reneau said that he was talking with ex-PUP Minister, Servulo Baeza, one day soon after the PUP’s trouncing in the general elections last February, and Baeza was talking about rebuilding the party. “I asked him, how can I help?”
According to Reneau, Belize needs a strong Opposition to keep democracy alive.
“Perhaps maybe it is because I am a builder at heart. I love problem solving and negotiation…and the rest is now history. Within a week or two, I became an active member.”
He claims his forte is working with people, especially young people, helping them to go in directions to make them emerge as good citizens.
As to allegations of his involvement in the fleecing of Ministry of Education funds, as reported over five years ago, Reneau claims that he never dealt with any money and he had no involvement in any theft of funds.
“We’re in a political campaign, they will try and dig dirt, what they will not find is a voucher made out to someone with Cecil Reneau’s signature on it that is outside the purview of the Dept. of Education,” he told us.
Reneau has a doctorate in vocational and technical education, and his last full time employment was serving as project director at the ITVET, an arrangement that ended in February 2005.
He describes himself as a farmer, builder, social worker, and spiritual person, who loves gardening and food processing.
On Nomination Day last Monday, Reneau threw his hat in the political ring, giving his formal commitment to challenge Mayor Zenaida Moya.
Moya won, almost hands down, as the UDP’s mayoral candidate in the United Democratic Party’s open convention, held last October, placing her as the leader of the party’s Belize City slate. As the leader, she has been the subject of a slue of political advertisements from the Opposition, PUP: images after images of streets with unsightly garbage strewn all over them…what the PUP describes as her 7-bedroom mansion outside the City…a string of cheques to her brother and sister-in-law totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars…the list goes on.
“It’s political. That’s the way I see it,” she told our newspaper.
Asked if the support she enjoyed in last year’s party convention would still be there on March 4, Moya expressed confidence that it will. She told us that she is encouraged each day by those who tell her not to give up.
Moya contends that she is guilty of no wrongdoing and that whatever she did, it was because the council’s work had to get done, because some councilors have been failing to do the work that is required under their portfolios.
She says that she has always been open with the state of the Council’s finances, and has always offered the documents whenever the council holds its monthly public meetings.
“If you don’t have anything to hide, you will make the financials public,” she told us.
As to the advert about her mansion, Moya says that the house she is building is a two-story house on cement pillars, but only has two regular bedrooms and a master suite.
Moya says that after she became an economist in the public service, she acquired her own house in Belmopan, and later a 10-acre property at Mount Pleasant, and another at Orchid Garden Extension in Belmopan. She said that in 2005, before she was asked to run for the UDP, she was already constructing cabanas for an eco-lodge at Mount Pleasant, for her venture registered as Mount Pleasant Adventure Lodge. These are assets she had even before she entered politics she said, adding that she abandoned her business plan to run for the mayoral slot in Belize City, losing tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
As to her new “mansion”, Moya says that it is not a multi-million dollar investment, as the Opposition claims, but a $400,000 piece of property, for which she borrowed $345,000 from the Bank of Nova Scotia, and her mortgage payments are $4,000 monthly. (She showed us the documents while we interviewed her.)
Moya contends that there is a strategy to methodologically destroy her political career, to make her a one term-mayor.
As to her biggest lesson during this term of office, Moya said she has become a bit wiser to understand that you can’t always trust everybody around you, and sometimes, the day you don’t see eye-to-eye with them, they will come heavy at you.
“Everybody grows from challenges,” she said.
There are only a few days to go before the big day – when voters decide whether they want to give Moya a second term, or whether they think Chubby can do a better job at leading City Hall.