3 days ago
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The People’s United Party says its municipal conventions have been drawing strong voter turnouts across the country, and it expects Sunday’s Belize City convention to generate the same level of support. PUP Chairman Henry Charles Usher says the party has seen candidates and supporters turning out in large numbers as it finalizes its municipal slates. He expects hundreds of delegates, along with party supporters, to gather at the ITVET compound on Freetown Road for the highly anticipated Belize City contest. Usher also addressed how the number of delegates was determined for the Fort George and Pickstock divisions. Both areas recorded endorsements, rather than contested conventions, for the first time ahead of the last general election. He explains how the party handled the delegate allocation for those two divisions and how voting will proceed on Sunday.
Henry Charles Usher, Chairman, PUP: “The People’s United Party has the most representation and participation at the convention level of any political party in this country. At this municipal convention for Belize City is bigger than the UDP’s national convention. That is how broad-based and participatory this particular process is. At this particular level when we had the delegate convention approved for Belize City, as you rightly said there are two constituencies that did not have any elections last year. There were some who were saying that maybe those constituencies would get 100% because they won 100% of the vote. Of course, that would not have been fair. And of course there was the opposite side of that saying that well if there’s no election you get zero and again you don’t want to disenfranchise any party supporters from any constituency from being able to participate in this convention. A decision was made to say alright let us look at the voter turnout in the election and the margin of victory that was suspected or projected in these two constituencies. So that was the formula that was used. And I think that even using that formula it was probably a little lower. Why? Because those two constituencies, Pickstock especially and Fort George, we have very high turnouts. In terms of what the constitutional for a party says now that the determination of delegates is one for every 25 votes received at the last election, now that refers to an election at a national convention. So that is the formula used at a national convention or national convention where we’re looking for all of the different executive posts of the party. It’s also used for special conventions at the national level.”
The convention will determine the PUP’s mayoral candidate and ten councillor candidates for Belize City. Usher says the party is also nearing the end of its countrywide convention schedule. Once all nine municipal slates have been selected, the PUP will turn its full attention to the campaign for the March 2027 municipal elections.
Henry Charles Usher, Chairman, PUP: “We had set a timeline at the national executive level to have all the slates in place by our party’s birthday, which is September the 29th. So hopefully we have all nine. Well, I don’t know if the endorsement conventions probably will happen after but we know who the teams are. We know who will be in San Pedro for instance, who will be in Dangriga, who will be the team in Belmopan, in Orange Walk. These areas already have their slates they just have not had that swearing process, the endorsement convention as yet. But all nine we want to have in place by our party’s birthday and then of course after September, September is the month we celebrate Belize, so after September we get into campaign mode and we start to focus towards March of ’27.”
Usher says completing the conventions will signal the official start of the party’s municipal election campaign.
English (US) ·