Mayoral candidates for Belmopan share their plans
This morning the Belmopan mayoral candidates for the two major parties made their scheduled pre-election appearance on the Open Your Eyes morning show. The P.U.P.’s candidate is Rosalie Casey, a public service veteran with thirty-five years of experience. According to the former administrator, she wants to see the capital city develop to its full potential. On the red aisle, Mayor Simeon Lopez, is looking to retain his seat. Lopez, a retired educator, is campaigning on a platform of experience and integrity and says he wants to use the next term to improve the municipality’s infrastructure.
Belmopan Resident #1
“With the youths, have programmes that the youths can develop themselves.”
Belmopan Resident #2
“I believe that there are some land development type issues. Here in Belmopan there is always a problem between RECONDEV and the City Council, the tug of war in regards to the authority over land.”
Simeon Lopez, U.D.P. Mayoral Candidate, Belmopan
“We want to—our intention is to make its infrastructure as solid as possible. Belmopan needs that, it’s a refuge for people from the coast in times of hurricanes. The vision here is to make it into a municipality where the infrastructure is solid enough and all the amenities, the electricity, water and so are ready to take in the influx of people that would come in. And also now we want to improve on buildings and draw investment into Belmopan so that it would create jobs. Opportunities for employment are very, very important. The dismantlement of RECONDEV is also my vision because we don’t want it to be duplicating the elected and statutory body. The statutory body is duplicating some of the efforts of the city council and we need to dismantle that and we hope after this municipal elections that will happen, so that the elected officials will be able to carry out the running of Belmopan as it should be.”
Belmopan Resident #3
“The streets need to be repaired, there are a lot of holes and it’s very dusty, especially during the dry season.”
Rosalie Casey, P.U.P. Mayoral Candidate, Belmopan
“What was shown as bad streets, that is beautiful good street. I should take you and show you the bad streets, because in a clip like that it is giving a false impression because you try to shift away from a hole and you drop in three others and those are not little holes, those things are craters and people every minute are spending money and replacing shocks. The whole purpose of getting in there and what I want to see and the vision is that we want to see Belmopan develop, we want to see Belmopan become what it was before, the beautiful Garden City of Belmopan. That is what we want to see. We want our people to have work, jobs. We want to have women in the home to feel comfortable, to know that they have skills. This is something that they can do to earn them money while they are taking care of their kids. We want our youths to know that we have the vision and we will give them the service to know that they have jobs, that they have some sort apprenticeship programs that they will be able to earn while you learn and that there will be a lot of sporting activities.”
