On Tuesday's newscast, we told you how the churches have signaled that
13,000 plus registered voters have signed on to their petition to take
the marijuana bill to a national referendum.
They said that they have gotten 70% of the signatures needed in only 6
days. They interpret that to mean that citizens are showing big support
- in a very short span of time - for the church's petition push to find
out what the electorate really wants the Briceno government to do with
their Cannabis Bill.
Here's how it works: Belize's Referendum Act says that a referendum can
be triggered, quote, "...where a petition is presented to the
Governor-General signed by at least ten percent of the registered
electors in Belize whose names appear in the approved voters' list'"
End quote.
There are currently just under 187,000 registered voters, so 10% of
that total would be 18,700 voters. Today, the churches said that they
are very close to reaching that threshold to trigger the referendum. So
they have been collecting signatures at busy public spaces all across
the country. Today, we caught up with Pastor Louis Wade who had a team
at the Belize City Bus Terminal.
Here's what Wade - who is both pastor and pitchman - told us at midday
about the continuous stream of Belizeans who are signing on to the
referendum petition:
Pastor Louis Wade - Supports Legalization Referendum
"You'll notice that I'm not in Belmopan today. I have come to the hub
because Belize City is the marijuana capital of the entire country.
And, some of our pastors are afraid to come out. So, I've come up to
rally support. We have 9 people in this particular area. A place like a
bus terminal is a countrywide hub. So, we can get a better grasp of the
heart of the entire nation from this particular location. We have also
had another team right now at the Belmopan bus terminal because that is
also a hub. A little later, the team will be at the boat terminal
because people are moving out to the islands to go and spend their
holidays. We're not joking on this issue. We're extremely serious that
a message has to be sent to the government that you can't just talk to
your 'partners' who smoke weed along with you, and your little crew at
whichever part of the city is your hub, and believe that you have the
sentiment of this entire nation. The referendum brings us to a neutral
place where statistically, mathematically, we find the pulse of the
nation. No politician should be afraid of the pulse of the nation. The
church should not be afraid of the pulse of the nation. Listen, there
are people in the church who don't want a referendum. They're afraid.
There are people among the politicians who are afraid, and my thing is,
to get the pulse of the people. If the people say 'yes', the people say
'yes'. If the people say 'no', the people say 'no'. I asked to do the
interview here at this particular location because we broke the record
for the most signatures from one location in a short period of time.
So, we were able to get 75 signatures here in half-hour. So, within an
hour [to] an hour and a half, they ran out of petitions. And I'm
running around the city trying to scrape up whatever additional I can
find."
We also asked about the possibility that despite all these signatures,
it could amount to an effort in futility where Government could still
block the referendum. Here's what Wade had to say about that:
Daniel Ortiz
"Are you and the other pro-referendum supporters concerned that you
reach this threshold, and somehow, the government finds a way to say,
'Look, we won't proceed with a referendum', even though you've gotten
this many Belizeans to agree to one."
Pastor Louis Wade
"20 thousand signatures in a week are no easy feat. No political party
can do it. They cannot do it. No NGO can do it. The church has only
been able to do it because of the collaborative work with other
organizations. Only yesterday, the unions, who approved the referendum,
came on board to get petitions. Yesterday... So, we go one step at a
time. We pull the trigger first. After we pull the trigger, we submit
the signatures to the Governor-General and we wait."
Daniel Ortiz
"Not because somebody signs means that they're automatically signaling,
'I don't want this bill passed.' All they're agreeing with the church
is, 'Let's go to a referendum.' They aren't saying 'no' to marijuana
legalization."
Pastor Louis Wade
"From my estimate, when people sign the petition, they tell you why.
'This is why I am signing it' And they're signing it, most of the time
because they're saying 'no'. People who smoke marijuana are signing the
petition, and they're saying 'no'. They don't want anybody else to
smoke it around their children because they don't smoke it around their
children. So, you might fight very young people who do not have a
family, yet. And maybe they smoke, they might tell you, 'Legalize it!'.
And they'd shout pass. You ask them if they're registered, and most of
them are not registered. You see, that's very key."
Wade says that the churches have teams in some of the busiest areas in
communities all across the country. He insists that the political
directorate cannot ignore a large mandate from the voters if the
churches achieve the necessary referendum threshold.
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