7 News Belize

Oceana Calls For Nationwide Voting In People's Referendum
posted (February 22, 2012)
Another Organization on a mission is OCEANA.

They are organizing for what they call a People's Referendum - which is now set for next week Wednesday - not Friday as had been originally announced.

This afternoon Oceana launched its effort unveiling their plan of action by keeping it as an initiative that is people driven. Vice president of Oceania explained how, to 7news.

Audrey Matura - Shepherd - Vice President, Oceana
"What happened is that we had the official launching of our "The People's Referendum", which is the initiative of the Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage. What really we are doing there is to make people know that today, marking one week from now; we're going to have a national referendum, countrywide. That means next week Wednesday, on the 29 of February, we are calling people to come out to the polls. The polls will be opened from 6 in the morning until 8 in the evening. Every district will have their own polling area - more than one polling areas, and we'll be publicizing those in the Friday newspaper, And we want people to go out and vote; it's not to go out and sign, because some people think it's to go and sign. No, we're not collecting signatures anymore; we want people to vote. We've collected signatures, and it's been rebuffed. We've done our poll to show that the people definitely oppose offshore drilling. So now, we are giving people the opportunity to go to the poll and vote no to offshore drilling. So what we did was an official launch; we informed the public as to where we are. We introduced our national campaign manager, who is Mr. Francis Gegg. We also had a special presentation by the BTIA, Mr. Jim Scott, who - the BTIA chairs the Coalition, so they're also the chairperson for the Coalition. Mr. Scott is the president of the BTIA, and he wanted people to know that, look the whole tourism industry - the majority of them are definitely against offshore oil simply because of what it means - the impact to the tourism industry. When the Eco-audit was released, it revealed - according to the Fisheries Administrative Act - over 20% of employment presently is as a result of the marine resources that we have; that's tourism and Fisheries. So we've officially launched, and we're reminding people why it is that we are doing this initiative. One of the features that we also highlighted today was the call center. What we have are volunteers coming in - we need a lot more volunteers. We have phone lines that we are manning from 9 in the morning until 9 in the night. It's people calling out unregistered voters, telling them about the referendum, reminding what day, what it means, answering any questions, and answering any questions they may have, because we want to be able to reach the electorate, not only through ads, but one-on-one contact. Obviously, we don't have the machinery of a political party, so we have a call center, and we have volunteers calling and telling people, informing and inviting them to come out. And what we like about it is that the response has been very positive, and people are asking questions. We just love the dynamism of what is going on."

Operations bringing together the logistics are being headquartered at Oceana's office at the corner of Regent and Dean Streets is Belize City.

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