Progressive Party limiting number of candidates for general election

Published by BBN Staff at September 20, 2020

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Posted: Sunday, September 20, 2020. 6:12 pm CST.

By Aaron Humes: Following Thursday’s announcement of its participation in the 2020 general election, Political Leader of the Belize Progressive Party (BPP) Patrick Rogers discussed the party’s strategy going into the poll with us.

He called it “a conscious decision” to have fewer candidates, or in his view, the right number of candidates that the party can devote resources to, in order to get some wins and a foothold in the National Assembly.

“It’s a strategy we are implementing, whereby we already see that the corrupt businessmen will never give us money, because to them, they are investing, and we don’t accept investment in the BPP. [From] the smaller business people who give genuinely, we expect maybe we could raise like we did the last election, 80 thousand, but if we were to raise that 80 thousand again, we want to be able to service and support our candidates better. So, if we go into the election with under 10 candidates, we would have more resources available to service and support those candidates,” Rogers explained.

For that reason, he said, the party was not recruiting candidates although they would not turn away those who they felt could be a help for the party.

The candidates listed on the party’s website at the moment are: Political Leader Patrick Rogers, Pickstock; Deputy Leader Wil Maheia, Fort George; Edna Diaz, Corozal Southeast; Lion Bennett, Sr., Belize Rural Central; Karen Banner, Belize Rural North; Evan Thompson, Port Loyola; Richard McCaulay, Stann Creek West; and Gary Matus, Queen’s Square.

As the sole third party running in the 2015 general election, it’s first, the BPP captured 2,336 votes nationwide for 1.65 percent of the total, despite running 25 candidates.

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