Orlando Habet says threats have been made by U.D.P. functionaries

Orlando Habet

Former P.U.P. standard bearer Orlando Habet lost to Elvin Penner by a mere seventeen votes in the last general elections. Habet has maintained all along that the elections were stolen because of the mass nationalization and subsequent registration of Guatemalan nationals and other Central Americans by Penner to vote in the 2012 elections. In the instance that Penner does not resign, Habet, who hit the ground running on news of the scandal, says that threats have been made by functionaries of the ruling party to cancel land documents, as well as academic scholarships and other government assistance should voters sign the petition for Penner’s recall. 

Orlando ‘Landy’ Habet, P.U.P. Candidate, Cayo Northeast

“We consulted with our party and with our western caucus and shortly after we activated the recall petition on Saturday, October fourth, 2013.  We were out in the villages of Cayo Northeast encouraging people, informing them and collecting signatures and on that very first day we collected more than seven hundred signatures, thanks to the efforts of our committee of the Cayo Northeast caucus committee and our caucus.  The collection signatures to date, as mentioned by our party leader, stands in this very box with more than fifteen hundred signatures, representing more than eighty-nine percent of what we need to collect.  Mr. Barrow and his U.D.P. were out in San Ignacio on the very next day, on October fifth.  They had activated what they termed an Anti-Penner Recall Petition.  We must understand that Barrow’s campaign to an anti recall petition is tantamount of the vitiation of the very act of the very legislation that he passed giving the citizens the right and the opportunity to recall an elected representative as stated under the Act Number Twenty of 2010. The prime minister clearly does not have the support of the people.  There is clearly a lack of credibility in his government.  The result clearly shows a victory for the people of Cayo Northeast and for the country of Belize.”