Municipal elections will be held countrywide in 28 days and this week both major political parties have stepped up their campaigns. The field generals at the head of both red and blue camps are Yasser Musa for the PUP and Dale Trujeque for the UDP. Over the next four weeks, both will oversee the deployment of a vast trove of human, financial and operational resources to deliver victory on March first. But how do they plan to do it? We spoke to both today.
Yasser Musa, PUP Deputy Chairman for Public Relations
"There are three things that we have to do between now and March 1st and those three things are hard work, hard work, and hard work. And on Monday the 6th of February we will be presenting our manifesto to the public on a national level, all nine manifestos; Corozal to Toledo, Belize City, San Pedro to Benque. Simultaneously at 10 am the Belize City manifesto will be presented at the Independence Hall, our party headquarters, and of course the other town councils will be doing theirs simultaneously around the country."
Jules Vasquez,
Dominance is certainly an important thing in any contest and is the PUP attempting with that sort of launch, simultaneous, national, multilingual launch---is it attempting a blitz approach to just stun their opposition into complacency or into fright?
Yasser Musa,
"Well I think that people expect a high level, a quality presentation and we will deliver quality presentation. We don't approach things from a dominant standpoint, because if you do that, that is arrogance and you will lose. Our approach is that there is a lot of work to be done, we need to go to people's homes, sit down in front of them, talk to them, explain what our platform, what our formal agenda is, and that is the only way we can win."
Dale Trujeque, UDP's National Campaign Manager
"Think we're looking good. We have our teams all in place on the ground, we have the support teams that all the different slates need in place, and everybody out there is doing the work they need to do. Our PR team is dealing with our marketing so I am sure that we are where we would want to be at this time. At this time, there is nothing we could be doing differently."
Jules Vasquez,
The PUP has disclosed that shortly it will be going on a major national manifesto launch, next Tuesday, I believe they will launch all of their manifestos simultaneously in all major towns, multi-lingual versions, all."
Dale Trujeque,
"What they are going to do is eventually, exactly what you said, stylish. This is going to be grand and that's PUP but PUP has to believe its own lies when they put it out there. People can't be lied to anymore, I am sure of that. What they will be putting out there is cosmetic and the people know its cosmetic because the people di feel it."
