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Derek Aikman announces pre-election telephone poll exercises

GeneralDerek Aikman announces pre-election telephone poll exercises
On Friday of this week, there is going to be an “election” – not the actual one, which is still two and a half weeks away, but the first of two pre-election polling exercises, by telephone, to be held simultaneously with the nomination of candidates for the general elections on Friday, February 17.
  
The exercise was announced today by former United Democratic Party (UDP) area representative and Minister turned businessman, Derek Aikman, 52, now President and CEO of his own firm, Aikman and Aikman.
  
Aikman himself is still well-remembered for his own swift electoral rise – and dizzying fall. He burst onto the local political scene with an upset of Prime Minister George Price in the Freetown Division in 1984 and held the seat in 1989, only to be forced to resign due to bankruptcy.
  
After recovering, he tried a comeback in the Fort George Division in 1998 under the UDP and lost badly to the incumbent, Said Musa.
  
More recently, he was author of the 2007 informal referendum on the issue of a Government-backed guarantee on a loan from the Belize Bank for Universal Health Services, now Belize Health Care Partners Limited, and founder of the Belize Covenant Movement, during which time he was the subject of an unusual and never-solved kidnapping/disappearance that had a nebulous connection to the Telemedia Vesting Bill.
  
Speaking today to the press at the UWI Open Campus Conference Room, he said that a good number of Belizeans he has spoken to, prominent and otherwise, are “struggling” within themselves to decide whom to vote for in March, or whether they will even vote at all.
  
Aikman believes that Belize’s choice on March 7, at least at the national level, is grave and important in light of the road ahead, and to help voters get a clearer read on how the parties and their candidates stand in the run-up to March 7, his firm, which manages a training academy for local and international business professionals, will be organizing two “election” run-throughs in which voters can say who they believe will win the upcoming general election.
  
Asked to distinguish between the use of ‘belief’ and the question “who will you vote for,” Aikman said that the private’s citizen’s vote is just that, private, and not necessary to know at this time. He also ruled out holding a poll for municipal elections on the grounds of being more complicated than the one-on-one, first-past-the-post nature of the general election contests.  
   
A second poll will be held on March 2, a few days before the election, representing the last major public opinion survey before election day.
  
Both polls will take place at St. Mary’s Hall on North Front Street, which Aikman remembers as a political crucible and the home to the counting station for various elections, and will be run similarly to the actual election, except there will be no ballot boxes used.
  
Instead, using the official voters’ lists provided by the Election and Boundaries Department, voters will be randomly called via cell phone and landline, and asked to state their belief as to who will win in their division. A tally will be kept from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., the standard time for elections, and after tabulations, a winner will be announced later on Friday night.
  
Aikman says he has been in touch with the various stakeholders in the process and independent elements to participate and scrutinize the process, going so far as to encourage parties to come to St. Mary’s to observe after finishing with their nomination business.
 
As for matters of finance and sponsorship, Aikman says he is soliciting donations to finance the poll and will accept deposits at a Heritage Bank account titled “Election Polls 2012” (no number given for reasons of privacy.)

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