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PUP Candidate Offers Land To Registered Voters Only
posted (February 17, 2025)
And, in other political news - we today asked the Prime Minister about a Land Distribution fair in Burrell Boom village which was held last Friday night.

The aspiring PUP candidate Marconi Leal Junior posted a flyer for the second week urging first time voters to come out. The flyer also stipulates that applicants must be registered voters of Burrell Boom village. This morning on Sunup, Jules Vasquez said that was discriminatory and unfair since access to consideration for land is considered a Belizean birthright. There is also a fifty dollar application fee which some have complained about. Today, the Prime Minister said we're twisting things but concedes that maybe using the term registered voters was ill advised:

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Again there goes Channel 7 twisting things, sometimes you need to be a journalist and don't be.…anyway. Let me answer your question when you have these land clinics the area representative has to pay to move all these people. tTe ministry does not have the funding so the area representative or in this case Marconi Leal Sr, and his son now by extension, the candidate they pay thousands of dollars to come to work, take it that they work late at night and they have to house them with hotel and with food so what is it that you want to do? You want to make sure that you can take care of the people you want to serve. In this instance it was the people of Belize Rural North. When you look back, we all have the 20/20 vision like you say maybe he should not have used the word "registered voters" and probably use the people living in the Boom area because what has been happening is that when people hear land clinic, people from all over the country go there and then they are not looking after the needs of the people they are going there for. So, it has nothing to do with who to register or not but simply because they pay for this and so they want to make sure they can give a service to the people that they are servicing. That's it."

Critics say the location of the land is still unclear to villagers. A Leal supporter posted that this is not the first village being done using these guidelines.

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