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Written by CTV3 Publisher Sunday, 05 February 2012 02:40

Education

Yesterday via phone Oceana’s Vice President Audrey Matura-Shepherd spoke to CTV3 News about the rejection of eight thousand and forty seven signatures by the Election and Boundaries Department concerning the referendum. According to Matura no reason was given as to why the signatures were not accepted. Well, yesterday Chief Elections Officer Josephine Tamai, held a press conference in Belmopan and made it perfectly clear on what grounds the signatures were rejected.

Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer

“Of the total signatures that we reviewed a total of 12,113 were accepted as those were the ones who matched, those signatures matched those that we had of the records, in order to do the verification process what we had to do was to individually take out the record cards that we have on file to verify those signatures because those are what we use, because then a person goes in to register the information if placed on a record card and they need to sign it, a total of 8047 signatures were rejected which makes up the other 40% .  Signatures that were reviewed were rejected for reasons mainly majority of them the signatures just didn’t matched the signatures we have on the record card.  We also had those whereby thumbprints were used on the record cards but yet on the petition we had signature.”

Tamai also mentioned that in some cases the signatures had different surnames. But according to Oceana’s Public Relations Officer Naill Gillett, whatever reason was given by Tamai is not valid.

Niall Gillett, PR Oceana

“Oceana through its own party did its own vetting and we would find very strange that they would use that particular excuse that signatures didn’t match as an excuse to discard over 8000 valid signatures as far as we were made to understand that the signature were supposed to be verified with a voter not part of a signature, we stand by the signatures that were submitted, we just have to question the standard that were used to disregard those signatures.  We have to clarify really because the referendum act itself obviously has not clarified what does it mean when you are verifying a person’s signature, are you verifying that they are signing exactly as they did years earlier or are you verifying that the signature is indeed belongs to the person who signed it and that the intent was to sign that particular petition, we definitely believe that it is not just 8000 people that are affected but the entire 20,000 people who signed are now in limbo because they don’t know if their names are one of the ones that were rejected so that is something we have to look at, so it not just affecting 8000 people we are affecting over 20,000 Belizeans who took the time out to sign that petition.”

Vice President of Oceana Audrey Shepherd-Matura is presently out of the country. We understand that upon her return the organization will meet in order to discuss what actions will be taken.

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