Campaign gets down and dirty in final week

As the 2006 municipal campaign enters its last lap, both political parties appear poised to go for the jugular. Whether the most blood spilled will be red or blue is still anybody’s guess … but nowhere are the knives as sharp as in the race for the Belize City Council

Zenaida Moya, U.D.P. Mayoral Candidate
?Our team have vision, they have the competence, they have the capability, and they have the love within them to ensure that Belize City residents do have an effective and transparent U.D.P. city council.?

Yasser Musa, Public Relations Officer, PUP
?We believe to vote as a team, we want a team that will cooperate with the central government and a split council will be of no use. It will be as bad as to even waste your time with an opposition vote, so vote straight down the line blue.?

With just one week to E-Day, the streets of Belize City are covered with political posters and banners, radio and television stations are besieged with advertisements, and all the candidates are confident of victory.

But coming down the home stretch, it?s hard to miss the fact that U.D.P. Mayoral Candidate Zenaida Moya is getting the lion?s share of publicity from both sides of the fence.

Zenaida Moya
?We have been campaigning, so I have not been focusing in on those commercials. But what I can say is that nobody stones an empty mango tree.?

Only today, the P.U.P. has targeted Moya on a new topic, a traffic accident in 2002. And they are using the U.D.P. newspaper?s own account of it to put her in the hot seat.

Zenaida Moya
?That article, it shows that the Guardian they were doing their job, nothing wrong with that. I wasn?t a political aspirant at the time. What I can say though is that the vehicle in question that was said to be totalled, the C.I.B. is now driving that vehicle.?

Janelle Chanona
But did Stanley Leslie come and take off your license plate?

Zenaida Moya
?Never. I never called for Stanley?s number, so I am not aware that he took off any license plate. I never called him.?

?It is a petty propaganda that the P.U.P. is trying to spread, and clearly, if they have to go all the way back to 2002 to try and pull something you know, against me, if they think that is against me then it shows that they have nothing.?

Moya is calling for a hard look at the issues of city finances, infrastructure, crime, and unemployment.

Zenaida Moya
?We know that the P.U.P. have the money, they have both their money and our money at their disposal. What I am concerned about and what we have been hearing when we have been campaigning, are people saying, you know what come round this time last year the government had already read the budget. How come the government no read the budget yet??

?Clearly, taxes will be increased on the backs of our Belize City residents, the government is only waiting for March first for them to go ahead and read the budget and we will are the ones who will have to pay for all the mess that this government has put us through.?

But this afternoon, the P.U.P. camp denied focussing on Moya, maintaining that their campaign is about the need to keep a blue team in the city council.

Yasser Musa
?We have not focussed on her at all. I think to even think that, in my view, that?s?if you think about the opposition, our approach is that you will be wasting your vote because we want a cooperative municipal government that will cooperate with the central government. So our approach has been a general positive campaign with our manifestos. We?ve done an electronic manifesto, we have ads showing the positive side, and yes some of the musicians have gone in the direction of singing about some of the opponents, but that has been a fringe approach and not the central focus of our campaign.?

In the mudslinging prior to elections, the P.U.P. have also come under fire, accused of using public monies and employees to create political ads.

Yasser Musa
?If you listen to their radio show in the morning, they are being very vicious and vindictive, almost to the point of hate. And I think that will spawn all kinds of allegations, but I want to say categorically that we have not used any public officers of any sorts; we have our own team. All of those musicians, not one of them is a public officer … most of them aren?t even hired by any government or anything like that. So you can?t be accusing us of anything like that. That?s totally ridiculous.?

Janelle Chanona
?So the press office isn?t producing anything??

Yasser Musa
?I?you are sitting right now in the, you are standing now in the place that makes all those ads. I am quite capable of doing it myself. The people in the media that know me know that I am capable of doing it. I utilise a lot of technical personnel, none of them are employed by the government, they are all private people; and we have been on a very positive, very optimistic campaign and I think that?s what will hold us to victory.?

News Five and Love FM will be teaming up to provide complete nationwide coverage of the March first election.