Photo: John Saldivar

BELMOPAN, Sun. Feb. 5, 2023

Four-time former Belmopan area representative John Saldivar won today’s UDP standard bearer convention in Belmopan, outpolling his two opponents by garnering 901 of the 1870 valid votes cast at the University of Belize Jaguar Auditorium.

His opponents, George Lovell and Emil Torres, both first-time candidates, garnered 512 and 457 votes respectively, while 44 ballots were rejected as spoilt.

Michael Peyrefitte, the party’s chairman, immediately swore him in after the proceedings, and he and his supporters set off in a victory motorcade celebrating his remarkable comeback and resilience in the face of a series of setbacks to his political career over the past 3 years.

John Saldivar began what seemed like a long and a precipitous fall from political grace on February 12, 2020, when he stepped down as UDP Party Leader Elect just 72 hours after he had been elected by a large margin in a lavish national convention. He was also suspended indefinitely from the Barrow administration Cabinet, in which he had been serving as the Minister of National Security/Defence.

Saldivar had previously bounced back after losing to Patrick Faber in the contest for First Deputy Party Leader on May 30, 2016, a position regarded as the party-leader-in-waiting because the then party leader and Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, had publicly stated that he would not serve a fourth term and was retiring at the end of this term.

The post had become open after then First Deputy Party Leader Gasper “Gapi” Vega had resigned following the November 2015 general election, a UDP victory. Saldivar had even served as acting prime minister on occasion when then Prime Minister Barrow was out of the country.

Saldivar, however, was soon engulfed in several major scandals, most prominently his association with the man accused, and later convicted, of the murder and beheading of a Belmopan pastor and revelations that he had received tranches of money from Lev Dermen, 53, also known as Levon Termendzhyan, who was found guilty in March 2020 by a federal jury of two counts of conspiracy and eight counts of money laundering in Salt Lake City, Utah.

He subsequently lost his bid badly for a fifth term as area representative for the Belmopan constituency in the November 2020 general election to Oscar Mira, the PUP candidate (4,172 to 2,004).

Just on November 15 last year, the US State Department announced that it had designated John Saldivar as “significantly corrupt” and banned him and his relatives for the foreseeable future from entering the United States.

And on December 2, 2022, a 7-person UDP Special Committee narrowly voted NOT to allow Saldivar to remain a candidate in the convention.

But on Saturday, December 19, 2022, the UDP National Party Council voted “yes” in a virtual meeting, (43-39) to allow John Saldivar to run as a candidate.

UDP leader Shyne Barrow, whom Saldivar had supported in his bid to become the party’s leader, subsequently told the media that he was denouncing Saldivar and endorsing George Lovell. Reports are that Barrow campaigned for and financially supported Lovell, a retired Belize Defence Force Lieutenant Colonel and a 5-year CEO in the Ministry of National Security/Defence in the last Barrow administration.

Saldivar was quietly confident throughout today’s election and was almost circumspect in his statements to the media following his victory.

His defeated opponents both congratulated him on his victory and pledged their support for his candidacy.

In his post-election media scrum, UDP chairman Mike Peyrefitte ignored questions regarding a difference in positions between him and Party Leader Barrow on an agreement that gave Masjid Khan, convicted of terrorism by the United States, sanctuary in Belize, and announced that the next contested convention would be in Cayo.

Barrow had announced on January 17th and 28th, respectively, that agreements had been brokered paving the way for the endorsement of Mark O’Brien (Cayo Central) and Albert Fernandez (Cayo North East) as the standard bearers there.

Former area representative Omar Figueroa is the uncontested candidate for Cayo North, June Young is the only known applicant whose candidacy has been approved for Cayo South, whilst Miguel Guerra and Carlos Elias Cortez have applied to be approved as candidates for Cayo West.

There has been no public announcement by the party’s secretariat of a schedule for the more than a dozen expected contested conventions. Recently, endorsement conventions were held for a handful of constituencies and there was an announcement just last week that an agreement had been brokered in Pickstock between rivals for the nomination there, and that former 3-term city councillor Dean Samuels would be the sole candidate.

There may be as many as 10 constituencies with area representatives or sole candidacies that remain unchallenged.