Oceana Belize not giving up on referendum

Audrey Matura Shepherd

The Belize Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage intended to hold the referendum on the same day of the general and municipal elections on March seventh. And according to one coalition member, government ministers have already taken to the airwaves to shoot down the initiative. But the coalition will not give up on its movement to have the referendum take place. The NGO that triggered the move to a referendum, Oceana Belize is not taking the situation lightly. News Five spoke via Phone to Audrey Matura Shepherd, OCEANA’s Vice President for Belize. Shepherd is out of the country but is still on the campaign for the referendum.

Via Phone: Audrey Matura Shepherd, VP, Oceana .Belize

“We got a letter yesterday from the Governor General in which he indicated that the elections and boundaries has indicated that we did not meet the ten percent threshold. We totally dispute that because before we handed in those signatures, we did not only vet it ourselves, but we also went through a vetting process through an agency that we hired so that they would look and see that the people who sign are people in the database. But we did not have access to the actual cards to say oh yes every r and t and I matches the same. But again we are not writing experts, signature experts; that’s not our forte and I don’t know anyone at the elections and boundaries that has that expertise. The disappointment with it is that in the vetting process run with a thought that they would have then gone and visit with these people and check with them or call them to see if they indeed sign with this referendum because that is what you do when there is new registration and because the referendum is something new, you would follow those kind of processes that are already in the system. It doesn’t seem like that is what they do. So we still need to hear the official version because it si interesting that we started this process through the Governor Genera. We wrote the Governor General so expected an answer from the Governor General. And we subsequently wrote him a letter to ask him to find out if they can also give us an indication officially what were the ground upon which eight thousand signatures were disqualified. We found it amazing that now the government find it convenient to hijack the process and become the spokesperson. I’ve been informed reliably that both the Prime Minister and Mister Patrick Faber have gone on the radio making comments. But we never petition them. And as we have done, it was Monday of this week, we sent a letter to the Prime Minister telling him that it was still not too late for him to present a resolution in the National Assembly to get full support that in deed the issue of offshore oil is of such national importance that it should go to a referendum. Because the referendum act section two paragraph A allows for such a provision. We also were making sure that there was the other option available so that if this government genuinely wants a referendum, wants a mandate from the people, wants to know what the people had to say on this issue, they actually had a process that they could have used—separate and apart from the process we viewed. And obviously they had no intention because tomorrow the national assembly is officially dissolved.”