Just as last week did, this week began with intense political debate over the outcome of another round of Village Council elections and bold claims by both traditional political parties to victory. Today Amandala began to uncover the mystery of who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.
There were elections in 56 villages across Belize on Sunday, March 25. To claim a majority in this latest election, a party must claim a win in at least 29 villages. The ruling People’s United Party (PUP) is right on that border, claiming 29 of 56, or 51.8%, and the Opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) is claiming 30 of 56, or 53.6%—a mathematical impossibility that only makes sense if we assume that there are some villages that both parties are claiming.
That’s just what Amandala found out when it did a scrub of the lists submitted by both political parties. We zoomed in on Toledo, where we observed a remarkable overlap, with 7 villages being claimed by the UDP and the PUP. These villages are San Vicente, Pueblo Viejo, Naluum Ca, Barranco, Conejo Creek, Crique Sarco and Midway.
We decided to pick up the phone and speak with some villagers and some of the village council winners themselves to get their perspectives on whether their councils had gone blue (PUP) or red (UDP), as the different parties are claiming. While we were not able to do a comprehensive exercise, we found the feedback we got from the people we were able to reach quite fascinating.
Our first call was to Barranco, where we learned that Irma Gonzalez, who is admittedly a PUP, won the chair of the council. Gonzalez told Amandala, however, that while she is a PUP, she ran independently in the village council. She said that no one in her village declared that they were running on a party ticket, as they don’t want to play politics with the village council. She went on to say that most of the 6 councilors who won are neutral, and they did not declare any party affiliation.
We also called Juan Choc of Crique Sarco. Likewise, he admitted to being a PUP, but he told us that currently he is not happy with his party and would not want to be called a PUP chairperson. He said that he did not campaign under the PUP banner.
While speaking with our newspaper today, Choc raised with us several development issues, such as a promise he said Toledo East area representative, Hon. Mike Espat, had made to build a bridge in the village. He said that that promise was made 5 years ago, when the PUP was campaigning for general elections, and four years into their term of office the school children still have problems getting to school when heavy rains cause the water levels to rise, because no bridge has been built. The village has seen no progress, said Choc, who added that “mostly, they [the PUP] don’t want to listen.”
But while Choc acknowledges that he is still more sympathetic to the PUP than he is to the UDP, he said that the rest of his council is split, though he did not indicate to us how many councilors were affiliated with the PUP and how many with the UDP.
The next Toledo community we contacted was Sittee River, where we spoke with former chairman, Duncan McPherson. McPherson, a declared UDP, told Amandala that the proceedings went off without a hitch on Sunday, but what was interesting was that two UDP-affiliated persons went up against each other for the chair, and, according to McPherson, there was no PUP candidate for chair. Three PUP supporters contested for councilor seats and two won, leaving the majority control in the hands of the UDP. Angela Cuthkelvin won the chairmanship of Sittee River.
We also got some feedback from two adjacent villages in Stann Creek – Seine Bight and Placencia. The UDP claim victory in Seine Bight, which it described as a former PUP stronghold, while the PUP listed Seine Bight among four villages it says have “no affiliation.”
Despite an attempt by a group of Placencia residents to de-politicize the village council elections, we understand that that Council continues to be controlled by the Opposition UDP. Officials in the village told Amandala that only some candidates stated their party affiliation for the elections.
Tanya Neal, office manager of the Placencia Water Board, said that it is known that Placencia is traditionally UDP, but some people want to keep politics out because they don’t want to be hampered because of their political persuasion. Neal said that leading up to the elections there was an attempt by one of the political parties to form a slate, and that’s when a group of villagers started holding community meetings to dissuade villagers from voting along party lines and to look for specific qualities in candidates.
Things were quite different in the North, and there was no controversy over which party won which villages. Ministry of Local Government officials we spoke with today indicated that the reason is because there were clear PUP and UDP slates that were put up during the nomination phase in the North. We were told that in the South, and particularly in Toledo, there were virtually no party slates offered in the elections.
In Corozal, the PUP claimed three of nine villages. The Ministry has confirmed this claim. The PUP won two full slates in Patchakan and Xaibe, and a majority of Consejo. There were five solid UDP slates that won in Corozal, and one with a UDP chair and a majority of councilors.
Contrastingly, the biggest village in Toledo, San Antonio, was the only village where the red is recorded as having landed a full slate. Official sources say that in many cases there were as many as four or five candidates for chair and 20 or 21 candidates for councilors, suggesting that the pool of candidates in the South was quite diverse and less dependent on party politics.
In Orange Walk the PUP is claiming victory in Palmar, while the UDP is claiming that it gave the PUP its biggest upset in Trial Farm, where the party says its “convincingly won all seven seats.”
We gather that the party adds the word “convincingly” to dispel any controversy that may arise over a large number of spoilt ballots that were recorded in the Trial Farm elections. The number, we are informed, is substantially bigger than the UDP’s margin of victory. PUP reps had said they would challenge the results in Trial Farm. The UDP claims six out of seven villages in this leg of the elections for Orange Walk, and official reports corroborate that claim.
In Cayo there was no dispute over which villages were won by the PUP and which were won by the UDP. They each claim five of the villages in Cayo.
In the Belize District, the UDP only claimed Bermudian Landing in Belize Rural North, one of the largest villages in that area. On the other hand, the PUP is claiming most of the seats in rural Belize District – Freetown Sibun, Gales Point Manatee, Gracie Rock, La Democracia and Lemonal.
Village Council elections continue onApril 1, 15, and 22, for the remaining 80 villages.
In round one, held Sunday, March 18, the UDP claimed 72% of the 47 villages while the PUP claimed 60%.