U.D.P. CITCO Candidates look for victory
They didn’t launch their manifesto with a big splash, but the United Democratic Party’s candidates for the Belize City Council believe that their ideas and personalities will speak for themselves. Today I caught up with a few members of the slate as they prepared for the final week of the campaign.
Wayne Usher, Mayoral Candidate, Belize City
“I aim to not only be the Mayor, I want to be the best Mayor that Belize City has ever had so that’s my challenge.”
And a challenge the United Democratic Party’s Mayoral Candidate, Wayne Usher, is ready to embrace.
By any measure, the municipal elections have been fighting for a spot in the public eye. But these politicians persist, refusing to take the back seat come March 5th.
Fifty-one year old Wayne Usher, a career public officer turned political hopeful, is determined to clean up Belize City from top to bottom.
Wayne Usher, Mayoral Candidate, U.D.P.
“We see mountains so to speak of garbage over the place so we wonder, for example, where are the people who have been paid so much thousands of dollars, maybe millions, to collect the garbage? The health and sanitation situation is in dire straits in Belize City, right off we say that. Then we look at the crime situation which is both a central and a local government issue, we have to work in tandem with that and then we look at the streets and drains, the stagnant water, breeds the mosquitoes and that sort of thing. So there’s a whole lot of things that is very wrong with the city that we will correct when we get into office.”
The U.D.P City Council manifesto: Committed to you, Committed to Belize City, is built is the same anti-corruption platform of the central party¼something they say their constituents have asked for.
Wayne Usher
“They want to know that the money they’ve paid in taxes have gone back into infrastructure, development, into building up the city, rejuvenating it and not in people’s pockets as is what is suspected. That has come out very clearly that of course corruption has to be stamped out¼we need to see where our money is going, we start from there and we move forward.”
Laura Esquivel
“Me, myself, I like things being fair, equitable, I hate seeing injustice so I feel that that drive is what I will take into the city council in a proper equitable manner.”
Laura Esquivel, a councilor candidate, Belize City residents can be motivated into changing the face of Belize City for economical benefits.
Laura Esquivel
“We meet people that say I put a fence on my property and now my taxes went up. Well that’s the wrong way, we want to encourage people to make additions to their house to make improvements to their properties and so we want to look at a way of bringing in a tax incentive where if you keep property nicely, you make additions, we will look at that and give you a tax break because we realize that by you making your home more beautiful or your building more beautiful, you are helping to make your city more beautiful. We are getting a bad name out there Belize City itself is getting a bad name out there in terms of tourism so we are looking at the smaller things to help build the city to where it should be. Belize City was not necessarily ready for the amount of tourism that we started to get so we need to get to the point where we are at par with the amount of tourists that are coming into Belize.”
Another focus of the U.D.P. team is the empowerment of women.
Dawn Lemmott
“I think women in Belize are not getting the respect that we deserve. While campaigning a lot of people ask me, well you’re a beautiful young lady, why go into politics and I remind them, well I’m beautiful but I also have a brain. Right, and I want to be seen for my brain and not for my appearance. Women feel that sometimes well, I look good so probably I can find somebody to take of me and so forth. You need an education that is first and foremost so we will go on a massive education campaign. We need to educate them in acting respectable. You need to act respectable as a female in order to demand respect from others.”
Wayne Usher
“I would like to stress that we will place a lot of emphasis on the most vital important resource that we have available to us, that is the human resource. We want to get our workers to feel that they are apart of an entity that is moving forward, developing along with them and not just above them or sort of pushing anything down their throats. We want them to feel like they are part, they’re stakeholders in our developmental process.”
Lead by Mayoral Candidate Usher, U.D.P. councilor candidates include Anthony Michael, Dale Anthony, Darrell Bradley, Laura Esquivel, Cecil Jenkins, Dawn Lemmott, Eric Neal Jr., Jorge Pelayo, Norman Rodriguez and Ernesto Torres.
