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Will PUP Parliamentarians Make Briceno LOO?
posted (February 1, 2016)
Earlier we showed you how John Briceno was re-elected as leader of the PUP - his second go at the post. His first was from 2008 to late 2011- when he encountered significant, sustained resistance from the old guard. Now, a little more than four years later, Briceno finds himself in the a position where he has to look to many of those same old guard representatives to support him as Leader of the Opposition. That is a post which is spate and apart from party leader - and the constitution requires that the leader of the opposition must have the support of a majority of the parliamentarians. In the PUP, that would be 7, but on the face of it, Briceno only has three. So will the others who supported Fonseca in the convention help him? We asked Oscar Requena who lost in his bid for chairman:..

Jules Vasquez
"Will you be able to support him as leader of the opposition? Because we know that he does not have a majority of the PUP representatives, the representatives in the House of Representatives as a part of his camp."

Hon. Oscar Requena, Toledo West Representative
"My brother I am not going to comment on that at the moment."

Jules Vasquez
"But even if the delegates of the party were to say..."

Hon. Oscar Requena, Toledo West Representative
"That's a matter for the parliamentarians. The parliamentarians are going to meet and discuss that and certainly after this Hon. John is going to convene a meeting and the course is going to be determine."

Mike Rudon, Ch5
"Majority of the parliamentarians came out for the Hon. Francis Fonseca."

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"Well I think that they are going to do the honorable thing and I am going to be meeting with them and I am going to be asking them for their support and I am sure that they are going to respect the will of the people, the delegates of the party."

The other question facing Briceno is how much of his personal finance he will use to bankroll the party. Informed estimates say it needs about fifty thousand dollars a month to operate, and somebody has to come up with that six hundred thousand dollars per year. We asked Briceno if he will get it out of his pocket:..

Jules Vasquez
"Now sir, real talk in financing the PUP. The last time it left you in significant debt. It's quite well known. You racked up debt up to close to 3 million dollars. And now the party is in the same situation. It's broke. Will you pour more of your personal finances or from the finances into the PUP?"

Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"I think that the situation is so much different right now. First of all the party after I left, the Hon. Francis Fonseca and the Hon. Said Musa made a lot of cuts in the party. So they were running it bare bones. I have been working on a budget, an affordable budget, one that we can afford. Secondly, a number of people in the business community have already indicated that they are prepared to give is the support. Between 2008 and 2011 whenever I tried to raise monies for the party, it was same people within the party that use to discourage them from giving us money. But now they see what I am all about. They know that with me at the helm, with me leading the People's United Party, that we are going to form the next government and they know that and that is why I believe that it will be easier to be able to get funding. We are not going to have a lot of money. But at least I believe that we are going to have enough so that we can work, we can organize, we can prepare and we can win elections."

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