On Tuesdays newscast, we told you about the latest reports that the Elections and Boundaries Department released on the number of Belizeans countrywide who have already re-registered as voters.
At this time, only ninety thousand, eight hundred and seventy-three (90,873) persons are able to vote. That’s less than half of total number registered voters who were on the country’s voter’s list before the slate was wiped clean.
For the last 3 weeks, the trends are showing that less and less applicants are showing up at the registration centers to become re-registered. We got a chance to speak with Opposition Leader John Briceño about it after today’s Special Sitting for the Taiwanese President’s visit.
He told the press that his party has been experiencing additional challenges while trying to mobilize their voters to register:
Hon. John Briceño - Leader of the Opposition
"We knew that the re-registration process was going to be a challenge for everyone to get people to understand that they have to re-register all over and yes the numbers maybe below the target of the elections and boundaries commission but from our end we are meeting our targets. What we're seeing is that our people are more motivated, our supporters are more motivated than the supporters of the government. So we are meeting our targets, we believe we have done more than 50 percent of the target that we have in place. There are challenges yes, there are a lot of challenges. One of the biggest problems that we have is that on these instances all the offices that were opened and the people that are manned, they are not only sympathizers of the UDP, most of them are campaigners of the UDP and we have a massive problem with that because sometimes we tend to make things difficult when people to register. In instances they tend to try to turn us around and it creates a problem for us to try to - we feel like that should have never happened. Now we do have a good working relationship with the chief elections officer, we meet with her constantly, we pass our comments and they try to do as best as they can but there is only so much that can be done."
We hope to share the latest re-registration figures with you from the Elections and Boundaries Department next week.
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