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“We noh want no offshore drilling”

General“We noh want no offshore drilling”
True to the chants of Oceana’s campaign song, “We noh want no offshore drilling…,” a total of 28,208 registered Belize voters or 96% of electors who participated in The People’s Referendum on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, on the question: “Should there be oil exploration and drilling in offshore Belize?” said a resounding NO!, in line with the results of polls conducted by Belizean researcher Yasmine Andrews for the Coalition.
   
“The general conclusion is, Belizeans really do not want any offshore drilling. Now you can’t get any clearer than that,” said Andrews, pointing to the results of both the polls and the nationwide referendum.
   
She said the February 29 referendum results were in line with the results of two polls she recently conducted on the same question: one based on 4,000 respondents from the petition for an official referendum (which Government said could not be held because of 8,000 rejected signatures) and another involving 4,000 respondents from the wider population to compare the results of the first poll.
  
“Look at the consistency,” said Andrews: 94.3% of those polled from off the petition said NO, while 87.2% polled from the wider population said NO. She said those results are comparable to the referendum results, which yielded a 96% NO vote.
   
The reported referendum results range from 94% NO votes in Toledo to 98% in Corozal and San Pedro.
  
Carlos Santos, who assisted in Belmopan, said the people of Belmopan voted more as a statement that “we want to have a voice into what is going to happen out there.”
   
“We voted in defiance of the statements made by the government that we will not count—the 8,000 of us that were disenfranchised,” said Santos. “We were not intimidated by some…voices that were raised against us, and the people of Belmopan came out—and quite a sizeable amount of young people.”
  
The Coalition informed that among those who voted in the referendum were Opposition Leader Francis Fonseca and Minister of Police and Public Safety, Doug Singh.
  
Rick Moguel, former Ambassador of Belize to Mexico, who led the referendum team in Orange Walk, said, “Yesterday’s exercise epitomizes the true democratic manifestation of a hungry population that is hungering for a vote and demanding change.”
  
Moguel especially thanked the many civic volunteers who he said played a huge role in what he described as “a gigantic undertaking.”
  
“They went to the taco stands, started selling tacos so the taco vendors could vote,” he said.
  
At a press conference held this morning at the Oceana office in Belize City, members of The Belize Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage announced that only 4% of voters, or 799 electors who visited the 51 polling stations, including a mobile polling station in the Belize District and another mobile station in Toledo, agreed with the stance of the Barrow administration that offshore drilling should be allowed in Belize. There were reportedly 25 missing ballots accounted for in last night’s tally and 143 were reported as spoilt ballots.
  
Among those who voted YES to offshore drilling was Henry Flowers, former Commissioner of Lands, who told our newspaper after he voted at the Brodies parking lot at Mile 2 on the Northern Highway, that he is “all for drilling offshore.”
  
“If oil is out there and we are poor, we should extract it,” said Flowers.
  
Audrey Matura-Shepherd, vice president of Oceana Belize, recalled the account of an elderly Garifuna woman who voted NO to offshore drilling. She said that she loves hudut, a Garifuna dish made with fish, and she wants to ensure that there is always fish in the sea.
  
The April 2010 Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico left Belizeans with graphic images of the reality of what an oil spill can do, and the devastating impacts on marine life and their habitat. The Gulf does not have the second largest barrier reef in the world: Belize does!
  
“We will not stop until our reef is safe,” chanted Dr. Melanie McField, director of Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative in Belize, as she thanked all those who came out to vote on Wednesday, at the close of today’s press conference.
  
Flowers disagrees with those who oppose offshore drilling, and in his view, even if an oil spill kills the fish it won’t kill all the fish. “Some will die but the majority will remain,” maintained Flowers.
  
He also does not share the concern that advocates do for the risks posed to Belize’s world-famous barrier reef, an internationally recognized World Heritage Site.
  
“I do not see any specter of this thing destroying the reef. I cannot anticipate that…. I can’t foresee our reef being destroyed all,” said Flowers.
  
“If we find that oil out there, you might be richer, I will be better off,” Flowers told us. Siding with the Barrow administration on the issue, Flowers said that it is “a risk we have to take…” He goes further to say that he has 200 acres of land in Ladyville that he is willing to open to the oil companies to drill, and he is willing to move off his premises to accommodate drilling.
  
Like the vast majority of those who went out to vote, Omar Pott, owner of El Capitan, is far more concerned about the risks posed by offshore drilling.
  
“I am just an example of just how many people are connected to the sea, connected to the reef and I watch them every day,” said Pott.
  
For persons like Flowers who welcome the economic opportunity that proponents say oil drilling brings to a country, Pott encourages them to think again.
  
“I would say that’s a farce! We have BNE and now we have Treaty. Where is the economic benefit Belizeans get right now for that and how long have they been operating?” Pott questioned.
  
He noted that tourism and fisheries are effective ways to spread the wealth in Belize, as they contribute to 43% of GDP.
  
“If we would lose that, say for 3 years because of an oil spill, that would be devastating,” said Pott. “The crime rate would go up significantly, poverty would go up significantly. The ramifications are just too great!”
  
Pott said that he regrets the decision of the Government of Belize to declare 8,000 signatures on the offshore drilling petition invalid, due to alleged mismatches. As a consequence of that rejection, the threshold of signatures for an official referendum was not met, according to the Government; but the Belize Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage, with the help of scores of volunteers from across Belize, drummed up enough wave action to hold an unofficial referendum to register the people’s voice on this very important national issue.
  
“Government’s decision to reject the 8,000 and to proceed with offshore drilling is essentially telling them it does not care how they make a living—and that can’t work in a democracy,” Pott lamented.
  
Had the government permitted the official referendum on next Wednesday, March 7, the day that is convening dual general and municipal elections, said Matura-Shepherd, the 60% threshold to declare the referendum valid—though not really legally binding—would have been met, and they would have had even greater participation. However, Coalition representatives noted that they had to work with limited resources in a short space of time to make this national poll a reality.
  
There are evidently those in the electorate who don’t move to the polls unless their hands are greased with cash. A female voter of the Southside said she did not vote in the referendum because she only votes when people pay her to vote. She opted to not participate in a milestone event.
  
“This indeed is a historic moment,” said community activist Cynthia Ellis, who assisted in Cayo, adding that Belize has come a long way from the Heads of Agreement when we wanted a referendum to register our vote. “When they [those who come after us] look at us and asked what we did during that time, we need to be proud to say that we did the right thing!” she said.
  
Geovannie Brackett, president of the Citizens Organized for Liberty through Action (COLA), one of over 40 Coalition members, noted that they did not have the advantage of a huge political machinery, and despite not paying people to participate in the voting, the results, which polled close to 30,000, showed how people in Belize feel about this issue.
  
He said that they have come a long way since January 2010, when they first began to discuss the issue of petroleum exploration in Belize.
  
“When we were talking oil [then], people were saying, ‘What are you talking about?’ Today, we’re seeing the big difference,” said Brackett.
  
Brackett pointed to the story relayed by Coalition supporter Wil Maheia of Toledo, who spoke of a voter who willingly walked for two hours before he could catch a bus to the polling station in that district, as well as a 71-year-old woman who begged the Coalition to be picked up so she could vote.
  
“Those are just testimonies of how passionate people are on this issue,” said Brackett, “…to go against the will of the people, to me, I think that’s political suicide.”
  
Asked what next, Matura-Shepherd said this will depend on how the leaders of the nation will respond to the statement that voters made in the referendum.
  
Amandala was unable to reach Prime Minister Dean Barrow when we called him for comment.

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