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the prime minister says village council elections need to be de-politicized: John Briceno - Prime Minister
"They were the ones that politicized village councils in 2008 and I've been crying out from way back then, yes that's when it started to become political, oh we are winning, and PUP can't win, and that kind of stuff. It is only 3 years ago for the first time I put a slate in San Estevan because it doesn't make sense to politicize village councils. I wish we couldn't do that. I am going to sit with the Leader of the Opposition and ask if she would join me to maybe we need to look at the village councils and take a number maybe only villages that have more than 500 voters for instance to say, okay, there we have elections and the others we have a consultation with the ministry, the representative and the villagers to try and come up with a village council because it really pains me when you see small villages, people are fighting and they are railing up. That's contrary to what then former prime minister Musa was trying to do when we put the village council act. We were trying to deepen democracy, trying to put in the hands of the villagers for them to decide who they want and now we do that and the politicians come in and start to say we have to put our slate because people are with us and they're not with the next side. So for the opposition to say that, they know what they did back then to us. We even had to make an amendment. Remember at that time you did not even have to be on the voters list so you could come from anywhere and say oh I live there, so they were abusing that system, the UDP back then for village councils. In many instances we lost villages where we know we had the majority of the people that lived there but they were bringing people in so we stopped that, now we say you must be on the register roll to be able to vote so I wish we could stop the politicization of village councils."