U.D.P. says P.U.P. has too many council nominees

On Sunday the People’s United Party announced its slate of candidates for the March City Council Elections. David Fonseca will be running for mayor and there are nine nominees for councilor including incumbent Mayor Marshall Nuñez. Most of us didn’t think much about it because traditionally there have been nine members of the council, but that was before the proposal that the major be elected by a public vote rather than selected by council members. The United Democratic Party, which has been studying the proposed Belize City Council Bill, noted today that the bill actually provides for only eight councilors. In a press release the U.D.P. questions the discrepancy and observes that P.U.P. Chairman of the House Standing Committee Valdemar Castillo said in an interview yesterday that the bill provides for a mayor and nine councilors. The U.D.P. charges that the P.U.P. is either ignorant of the contents of their own bill or had to alter the number of councilors to accommodate Marshall Nuñez who decided not to run for mayor after all. Opposition Leader Dean Barrow tells News Five that he does not think the provisions of the bill should be changed in order to deal with, in his words, “political infighting”. He says that the U.D.P. is planning to hold off on its convention until all amendments have been made to the bill and it becomes legislation so that they will know exactly what the guidelines are and do not have to play what he describes as “a guessing game”. When contacted by News Five this afternoon, Valdemar Castillo said that the bill is not yet in its final form and that the government is still conducting consultations. He says all political parties are welcome to make recommendations as to the number of councilors or any other issue and that these will be taken into consideration. Castillo says he believes the problem is that the parties are heading towards a City Council Election at the same time that the bill is being finalized so the guidelines about the election of the Mayor of the City Council and the composition of the councils are still not clear. He said this is compounded by the fact that customarily there were nine people chosen at the political conventions.