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Coalition To Save Our Natural Heritage Launches People's Referendum
Written by CTV3 Publisher Thursday, 23 February 2012 05:13
On February 20th the Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage a non-governmental organization which will be holding a People’s Referendum on Wednesday February 29th presented to the media the results of a poll they conducted in order to find out where Belizeans stand when it comes to oil exploration and drilling in offshore and protected areas after the Government of Belize refused to hold a referendum on oil exploration on March 7th. For the survey which was conducted by four thousand registered voters from across the country were asked seven questions via phone. Overall the results showed that 87.2% of the interviewees said no to oil exploration and drilling in offshore areas while 12% said yes.
Yasmin Andrews- Satistician
“Do you think there should be oil exploration and drilling in offshore areas? The response is there 87.2% said NO so that leaves only 12% says YES, so that means that this entire country of Belize is saying that the sample of 4000 is representative of the three hundred and odd, we are saying that the majority of Belizeans do not want oil explorations to occur, 87.0 is a very, very high number, would you vote for there to be oil exploration and drilling in offshore areas. This is actually if you go to the referendum and wanted to vote and the majority of the participants 80% said NO, that means if there was a referendum and they went to vote this is how the tendency would be, the majority again 80% would say NO in the country of Belize. Would you like to have an opportunity to vote on whether oil exploration and drilling offshore areas should occur? This is would you like to have an opportunity for a referendum? Again the majority said YES which is 94% that means only 6% said NO, which means that the majority of the populace of this country wants a referendum, they want an opportunity to be able to vote. Do you think the opportunity to vote whether oil exploration and drilling in off shore areas should have been called off by the government? This is the recent decision, so we are asking the participant 4000 people of the entire country representative of the 350 because they were randomly selected and the response was NO, so 62% more than half of the population said the government should not have called off the referendum, only 37% said YES. Next question, would you demand that you be given the opportunity to vote on whether oil exploration and drilling in offshore areas should occur? So this is now after the fact and again the majority said YES, which is 90.8%, so just 9.2% said they won’t bother, all 3633 individuals, all participants, next question, do you think the Coalition which collected 20,000 signatures asking for a vote on offshore oil should fight action from government for calling off the voting on this issue, look at the response again, you are asking if the Coalition should continue whatever if you are going to put up fight in courts and the response from the participants was again 90.8% said YES, and then the last question here, was what should you think be the next step for the Coalition? So again, we are asking the participants after the fact, what is the nest step ok, and we gave them the option (a) people’s demonstration, (b) take it to court, (c) start the process over and (d) call people to action. And the majority said, call people to action, so it means get people active or motivated to pursue action after the fact that it was called off and that was 30.3% so this percent of the 4000 participants representatives of the 350 participants which is 1210 said they should call the people to action, the second highest was to start the process over which is 25.9%, 24.0% take to court and then people demonstration.”
This afternoon the coalition officially launched the Peoples Referendum during a special ceremony held at Oceana’s Office in Belize City.
Jim Scott- President BTIA
“Offshore drilling should be publicized it should not be politicized and unfortunately it has taken a road down the political sense, this is great opportunity for our political leaders to actually applaud democracy and the road to a healthy democracy and certainly our voices whether we all agree or whether disagree, our opinions and our voices should be heard and I think this is a healthy process and although we all reserve that right to our privacy and in essence that’s why we have private balloting booth and so forth for our elections and for this one as well we don’t know who is going to be casting their votes as yet but we also reserve the right to hold our opinions to ourselves or to publicize them, I always reserve that right but on this issue I am letting everybody know that and I think that I speak for the greater portion of the tourism industry that we will not want offshore drilling.”
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