Belize City Council sworn in
Their campaign may have been overshadowed by the general election held on the same day…but today the newly chosen members of the Belize City Council finally moved to centre stage. I joined them this morning at City Hall.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
This morning, David Fonseca and his slate of ten were officially sworn in to serve as the new Belize City Council. Mixed in with the familiar faces are four new councillors…but the team is remarkable in that six women have been elected to office.
A review of the municipal election results reveals that Fonseca and his council topped the polls decisively, with the lowest P.U.P. candidate beating the highest U.D.P. candidate by more than sixteen hundred votes. But Mayor Fonseca does not believe the Belize City electorate voted party down the line.
David Fonseca, Mayor, Belize City
“I look at the ballots that were produced at the end of the day and there was a high number of split ballots, for the very first time I have seen so many split ballots in municipal elections. I think there was a minimum of three hundred split ballots in each division; that wasn’t there before. So the people were looking for representation, and a high number of people have picked out the individual Mayor candidate and also councillor candidate that they wanted for their representative for the city.”
And one of those representatives is Councillor Marshall Nunez, who received more votes than any other candidate.
Marshall Nunez, Councillor
“I am extremely humbled by the support. It’s two elections in a row that the residents of Belize City came out in massive numbers to support me. I am extremely humbled by it and I am willing to serve them. I hope that the service that we provide from City Hall is what is appealing to the residents and that’s why they come back and give us that type of support. I am extremely humbled, I really appreciate the support from the residents and I pledge to do everything possible to kind of keep up that kind of reputation with the residents of Belize City.”
But now that the run for office is over, the council is ready to start running the city.
David Fonseca
“Infrastructurally, we are moving directly into our metro-vision where we are talking about the tourism sector, putting up our boardwalk on the riverside, on the Southern Foreshore side. Our car park for downtown, we’re also looking at the improvement of various parks throughout the city that we had had set up already by private sector that will now come in and do the improvement in these parks. And also, we will push very hard to get a regular monthly town meeting through the entire city, moving the town meeting across the city to get the concerns from the various citizens throughout the city so they can improve on what we are doing on a day to day basis.”
Another goal the council will be working on is a greater independence from central government. According to C.E.O. in the Ministry in Local Government, Roy Cayetano, municipalities still rely on Belmopan for much of their financing.
Roy Cayetano, C.E.O., Local Government
“Government at all levels are related. At the national level, has to provide the support, a good bit of the financial support. As you know, while we talk about autonomy and the hope is that the various entities, local government entities be able to support themselves as much as possible, the reality is that so far as I am aware, that is not the case. So there has to be a very case relationship between national government and City Council.”
And that relationship is expected to grow closer in the new term.
Among the U.D.P. eleven, Laura Esquivel, daughter of the former Prime Minister, topped the polls, while the leader of the slate, mayoral candidate Wayne Usher, received the least support of anyone on the ballot. He finished almost twelve hundred votes behind Esquivel and over three thousand behind Mayor David Fonseca. Belize’s second city, Belmopan, will hold its inauguration on Friday at 4:00 p.m. at Independence Plaza.
