All the pundits say there's going to be an election by the end of next year, but the question is who's going to run it? Government will need a new Chief Elections Officer because Stuart Leslie will leave the post at the end of this year. Leslie today confirmed to us that he is moving on, most likely to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In May of 2005, Leslie - Belize's longest serving Ambassador to the UN, was unceremoniously sacked by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Godfrey Smith. But his Foreign Affairs fortunes looked to have changed in April of this year, when Senator Eamon Courtenay took over the Foreign Affairs portfolio. Courtenay and Leslie are Briceno loyalists, so Leslie's move to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is almost considered overdue.
And while Leslie should land on a bed of feathers in either Foreign Trade or Foreign Affairs, the question is who's going to take over the bed of nails that he leaves behind? The run-up to what may be a desperate election, will be trying for whoever takes over the top job at the E&B Office.
Leslie says that to ease the transition for his successor, he leaves the office in election-ready mode. The electoral registers were recently cleaned up to purge the names of the dead and incarcerated. Those lists went through the courts unchallenged. One more thing that promises to make the year of election that much smoother is the fact both UDP and PUP have agreed to stand down on re-registration.
By law a new registration is required every ten years and the last one was in 1997 but reports to us suggest that both political parties are inclined to agree to sidestepping the exercise.
