We the People seeks public support
Its initial appearance on the public scene a few years back was greeted with a mixture of scepticism, enthusiasm and curiosity. Thumbing its nose at traditional fundraising and flipping the bird to both political parties, the reform movement calling itself We the People, proclaimed that it could revolutionize the Belizean political scene from the ground up. Now that electoral crunch time appears to be just around the corner, that assertion–and the man who made it–will be put to the test. This afternoon movement coordinator Francis Gegg took time out to offer an assessment of the situation.
Francis Gegg, Natl. Coordinator, We the People
“Our system doesn’t work. And until we change that system, we will be just continuing to be having the same circus with different clowns.”
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
So saith Francis Gegg, the National Coordinator of the We the People Reform Movement and candidate for the Fort George Division. Gegg and a slate of ten other political hopefuls are preparing to do what no other independent group has ever done before…win an election.
Francis Gegg
“We believe there is a majority out there who are dissatisfied with both the red and blue. The alternate right now is for us to go from the blue to the red, but we don’t see the red as providing any kind of credible alternate in terms of vision. Dean Barrow still refuses to endorse an elected Senate, he wants to appoint a Senate, which is what Said Musa has done, and that is not the way to create good governance in this country.”
And what of those pesky rumours of an early election?
Francis Gegg
“I’d say we are not ready, but we’re trying to get ready. We felt, and still feel, that elections might not be called that early. The Prime Minister in his campaigning in 1998 had promised the nation to regularize the date for national elections; it’s in his manifesto right here. It says that they would set a firm dates for all elections, and so I would question his wisdom in calling elections knowing what happened in 1993, knowing I think the sentiment of the nation right now on many issues. So I would say that calling early elections to me would not perhaps be the wisest thing for the P.U.P.”
But We the People is also wise to the fact that it will take serious money to launch a credible national campaign.
Francis Gegg
“We don’t have the resources that the other two have. And once again, I appeal to the business community, the Belizean people, if they really want to see good governance and functional democracy in this nation that they need to help us to get this message out to the people. But we believe that elections are won in the homes, and so we intend to take this message to the Belizean homes, sit down and chat with the people and explain to them what’s wrong.”
According to Gegg, one of the main platforms of the movement will be political education.
Francis Gegg
“We feel that our message has been very clear. We think that both existing parties have not served the nation well by educating the people about how we are governed. I am amazed that most Belizean people don’t know how we are governed, they don’t know how our democracy functions. And so what we have been doing is we have been teaching them about democracy, flawed democracy, functional democracy, and that we don’t have a functional model and we would need to do to create this functional democracy is to put in place a check and balance in the power of Cabinet. Our plan is an elected Senate. I think we have been very clear on that, we believe an elected Senate will be the engine for good governance.”
To strengthen his ballot sheet, Gegg is seeking an alliance with the Elrington brothers and several other independent candidates from around the country.
Gegg will appear on Wilfred Elrington’s radio show on FM 2000 this Wednesday at 8:00 p.m.
