7 News Belize

That’s “President” Audrey Matura Shepherd
posted (December 16, 2013)
It's official, Audrey Matura-Shepherd, the former vice-president of OCEANA in Belize, is now the President of the Christian Worker's Union. She was endorsed on Saturday, at an emergency congress to elect executive members.

As we told you, Matura-Shepherd's leadership of the union was supported by the stevedores and by long standing executive members Antonio Gonzalez and James McFoy, who the stevedores have been trying to eject since August.

It's a compromise to represent a newly unified CWU, and today, 7News spoke to Matura-Shepherd about the elections, and about her endorsement as president. Here's what she told us:

Audrey Matura-Shepherd - New President - CWU
"It went very successful. What people did not know is that a lot of the votes had to be by proxy. Amazingly 667 persons voted either in person or by proxy and those same 667 persons endorsed 4 positions, that is the president, vice president, organizer and the treasurer. Then there was an actual election to fill the post of 3 trustees and 4 persons wanted that position."

"We were hoping that it would have been a clear win, but it wasn't. The vice president is Mr. Basil Brannon, he is an employee at Central Bank. The organizer is Stephanie Gongora, she is an employee at the Belize City Council and the treasurer is Amy Fort and she is an employee at the First Caribbean Bank. The 4 persons who wanted to be trustees were Antonio Heredia who got 252 votes, Brian Duncan who got 234 votes. Mr. Heredia is from Social Security while Mr. Duncan is from Central Bank. The real show down happen between Deon Pitters and Maureen Mahmud-Reyes, both of them got 181 votes each."

Daniel Ortiz
"Three months there about ago you left Oceana and now you are a labour unionist. I know that there are those who are criticizing that you are using this as a platform to step into the political field. Do you have any such aspirations?"

Audrey Matura-Shepherd
"I want everybody to know that everything I've done before I went away to study and even when I came back has been politics. It may not be party politics. I walked away from party politics. I was in it; I saw that neither party wants to be fair. I can tell you I don't have any plans in the near future to go into any elected office. Why? I cannot be a UDP and worse I can't be a PUP."

Because Deon Pitter and Maureen Mahmud-Reyes are tied in the number of votes for the 4th trustee post, CWU will conduct a run-off election to decide between which of the 2 will be the final member of the executive.

Gonzalez and McFoy had led the union for 22 years.

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