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PUP’s Penner Recall DOA at E&B: 75 Signatures Short!
posted (December 31, 2013)
In 2013, one of the biggest, most explosive names in news was former Minister of State in the Ministry of Immigration Elvin Penner. He's been accused of facilitating an international fugitive in getting a Belize passport, cast aside by his own party, and harshly condemned by the opposition, media and civil society.

But tonight at the end of a very bad year, he remains a free man, a member of the House of Representatives in good standing, and the recipient of over a hundred thousand dollars annually in salary and community vote in public funds - that's not to mention his government ride and perks like health insurance.

And, tonight Elvin Penner has cleared one more hurdle; the PUP's attempt to trigger a recall has failed. One month ago the party submitted 2002 signatures to the Governor General, a few hundred more than the 30% needed to trigger a writ of recall. Well, over the past four and a half weeks those signatures were stringently reviewed by the Election and Boundaries office and today the PUP Secretariat was informed that over 300 were rejected, leaving the party 79 approved signatures short of the 30% threshold. The news came in a letter dated yesterday - and the man who would replace Penner, PUP Cayo Northeast Representative Landy Habet gave us the breakdown via phone half an hour ago:

Landy Habet, PUP Standard Bearer - Cayo Northeast
"From information received from Elections and Boundaries officers and after verification of the signatures of the petition against the official record of registered electors - that we fell short of the requisite number of electors as specified in sections 3 and 4 of the said act and that in those circumstances the Governor General wrote no writ of recall referendum can be issued."

"According to the chief elections office and upon review of the 2,002 signatures that were presented by Cayo Northeast and the PUP that only 1,665 were accepted. That means that we submitted 34.4% or 2,002. The required amount was 30% or 1,744 signatures and they accepted 28.6% to give that 1,665. To them we felt short of 79 electors or 1.4%. So, we feel that this is UDP politics. We know that the Elections and Boundaries Department has control and over the Elections and Boundaries Department, the government has. We feel this is political maneuvering."

The PUP will have a national Executive meeting next week to decide what it will do next.

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