P.U.P.’s National Executive Meets with Arthur Saldivar

The Arthur Saldivar/P.U.P. saga continued today with a meeting between the political aspirant and the party’s national executive. Saldivar, who is desperately fighting to contest the P.U.P. Belmopan’s convention this Sunday, was invited to present himself before the national executive. The meeting was to hear a presentation from him on why he should be allowed to be part of the convention. This is after he was interviewed by members of the P.U.P.’s Vetting Committee earlier this month which determined that Saldivar was not qualified to run in the standard bearer convention. Since that meeting, Saldivar has launched a second lawsuit against the party he wants to represent. He is asking for an injunction to Sunday’s convention and a declaration since he believes that the committee demonstrated bias in reviewing his application.  That hearing is scheduled for Friday, but as Chairman Henry Charles Usher says, the convention is set to be held on Sunday.  Usher explains why the Party’s National Executive decided to hear Saldivar’s plea.

Henry Charles Usher

Henry Charles Usher, Chairman, People’s United Party

“As you may recall we had our convention season starting in May and we end up right up to the end of June. We took a pause in July and August to focus on the re-registration exercise and we are stating up again this weekend and going forward. In the matter of Belmopan we have a convention this Sunday and in that matter we invited Mr. Arthur Saldivar to address the National Executive this afternoon. He did so and following that address we had deliberation by the members of the National Executive. As soon as Mr. Saldivar is notified of the decision of the National Executive we will make that public as to what that decision was.”

Hipolito Novelo

“What made the P.U.P. and the National Executive call Mr. Saldivar? This is after the vetting committee rejected his application.”

Henry Charles Usher

“Well I think there are two reasons for that. One, they wanted to give him an opportunity to address members of the National Executive. There has been a lot of back and forth on social media and on the regular media as well. This was an opportunity for this to address the National Executive. Two, the members themselves has asked that listen, going forward each constituency we want to play an active role from the recommendation of the Vetting Committee we want to be able to say listen we agree with it or we don’t agree with it.”

Hipolito Novelo

“During his presentation did he mention that he was not comfortable with the composition of the Vetting Committee?”

Henry Charles Usher

“He did not address that at all. On the issue on the default judgment that he had deferred to, the Party was operating under the understanding that while the application process was going through, while he was being vetted, that he would have put a hole on the claim. Only find out later he went ahead and got the default judgment. We have applied to set aside that judgment and we are waiting for a hearing date.”