And while there are over two dozen PUP candidates to fill 10 councillor seats on the slate, there is only one man running for Mayo - and that is Kevin Bernard.
That is unlike the UDP - where there were four mayoral aspirants. Three of them, Dean Samuels, BQ Pitts Jr and Earl Theus had all served in prior UDP councils, but the party went with a political newcomer, journalist Orson Picart.
It's an indication that the party wants new faces - and the party leader said yesterday that even he was overruled by his committee in this wish. He also spoke about the new candidate for Corozal Bay:
Hon. Patrick Faber, Leader of the Opposition
"It was the democratic process that said you know what we want to give fresh faces a try. I'll tell you a tale out of school, in my own constituency I had in my mind who I would want to support as the leader of the ship, it was a vociferous meeting - our young people made me know that listen we no noh that person, we noh want this person, we believe in giving people a new chance - put a fresh face, this person deserve a chance. They argued for some who may have ran in a convention before. Not all the people who we voted for ended up on the slate. But that is democracy. We had decided that in fact Hilberto Campos will be our candidate in Corozal Bay. I'll tell you that that comes with the full support of Pablo Marin and we did not have a fight. The PUP are having all kinds of grumblings going on there. They are trying to force fit a candidate to try to get some kind of sympathy on name recognition and all of that. That's not the case in the UDP. The former minister and representative Pablo Marin very graciously from the beginning said that he was not going to run, not only that he was not going to contest, but that he would support."
