Email

Print

The UDP handpicks its Senators; so does the PUP; the business sector has a cocktail; the unions have a meeting. Seems straightforward enough, and more than that, it looks like its working. But if you want to complicate something, bring in the NGO community. Now that the NGO community will have a senator they’re taking the selection process to a whole new level. Six months ago, eight NGO networks came together to make sure that when the time comes to select their senator, that person will have withstood a battery of pre-qualifications. The NGO representative will be elected to serve as a senator on September fourth. According to one of the network’s coordinator Yvette Alonzo after receiving government’s commitment to expand the Senate to include an NGO representative they came up with a formula, a kind of post-political alchemy to elect their first senator.

Yvette Alonzo, Coordinator
“Why is it important, as you know the government has made a commitment to expand the Senate to include an NGO representative and so for us it is a great opportunity now to be able to bring our issues at that level, both social, economic, environmental?

Of course we can’t have a representative there until those changes have been made to the constitution. As you know the consultations for the amendments to the constitution have been completed and we understand that sometime in late August or September this should be finalized and so we want to be ready. Once we are told this is final then we have a representative ready to participate rather than having to wait before we can have somebody in there.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
So now that you guys have come up with the criteria, I guess the next move is trying to find that person?

Yvette Alonzo,
“Exactly so each of the network organizations, because of course for example the Ministry of Human Development gave us a list of 94 NGOs so we are making a call to the NGOs, we need to verify these, many of them may not be functional anymore and so we’re asking the NGO that they need to get in touch with us, they need to submit their documentations that we are asking for so they can participate in this process.”

The deadline for submissions is August eighteenth. NGO’s participating in the election process must be registered in Belize under the Companies Act or NGO Act, must have a majority of Belizean nationals on their decision making bodies, must be in good standing, must be functional and active for at least one year and must not be subsidiaries of international organizations.