UDP gives nod to its only woman candidate
The story was all over the media yesterday, but today the United Democratic party made it official: Diane Haylock will be the party’s standard bearer in Pickstock.
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
No one knows for certain when national elections will be called. However, everyone now knows that the Opposition United Democratic Party has finally added a lone woman to their slate of twenty-nine candidates.
She is long time community activist and former Executive Director of SPEAR, Diane Haylock. Haylock says she’s honoured to have been chosen, but maintains she never aspired for political office.
Diane Haylock, UDP Candidate, SPEAR
“But I have been a leader throughout most of my adult life. I genuinely care about the socio-economic cultural life, I care about the national affairs of this country. I feel that Belize has a very limited human resource space and there are so many of us who are always on the outside saying, politics dirty, this dirty and I just feel that more of us need to get in there and clean it up.”
And that’s exactly what she’s planning on doing with the Pickstock Division since being named to succeed Kenny Morgan, who has been asked to step down.
Diane Haylock
“I have done a lot of work in the NGO community, those were good years of training. But I feel there are some issues at this point in time that I feel very strongly about, that perhaps I can’t really get those things addressed unless I’m really involved with national level politics, so I want to give that a good try.”
According to Party Leader Dean Barrow, several people came forward to contest the area, but later decided to give way to Haylock.
Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
“There were at the time, or over the weekend into Monday and yesterday and going into today, four persons who identified themselves as being ready, willing and able to run for the United Democratic Party in the Pickstock constituency. All four persons are of extreme distinction.”
Those people are former Permanent Secretary Wayne Usher, teacher Darrel Bradley and businesswoman Lisette Galvez. Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
Haylock will square off in Pickstock against Attorney General Godfrey Smith. Smith is known to be one of the hardest working campaigners in the business.
