Kevin Bernard Hints at Future Leadership Ambitions Within People’s United Party

Ambitions are fanned out within the People’s United Party as John Briceno may be looking at retirement in the coming years.  While Fort George’s Henry Usher refrained from taking on that conversation with us a few weeks ago, Kareem Musa of Caribbean Shores did express an interest if the opportunity arises.  Today, similar sentiments were shared from Kevin Bernard of Orange Walk East.  According to the former Orange Walk Mayor turned Government Minister, while he would be interested, he believes it is way too early to begin that discussion.  

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness: “We all have ambitions but I believe in one thing. I have always said this to myself and my family have always said we do it with humility. You start from somewhere. I started off seeing that I want to make a change in my community  where I started as a councillor. I decided that I think I could  do much more and so I served as mayor for three consecutive terms. I then thought that you know what I believe that I can do even much more and serving in the capacity as an area representative and I want to thank the great people of Orange Walk East for having given me that opportunity and I have been now re-elected. My plan is to continue to work for the People’s United Party, to continue to work for the Orange Walk East constituency and we will cross that bridge when we get there at some point.  Of course, as I said, as long as the people of Orange Walk East puts me here I’m prepared to work for the benefit of them, for the benefit of Belize and I know that people have been asking me about that, but for me that’s not the priority at this stage. That is not my priority. My priority is to continue to work for people of Orange Walk East. We will see where that trajectory takes us, or where it takes me at some point. We have great people in this party that can lead this party at some point down the road. For now, I’m focused on the fact that John Briceño is our Prime Minister, he’s our leader and as long as he’s leading this party I’m there to support our leader. I see when you look around the country in the PUP you could look at every area and there are people that can lead this party once and whenever the Prime Minister decides to leave politics. I mean you have great people in the West, have great people in the South, you have  people in the North, and of course in Belize City there are great people that can lead this party. As the Prime Minister mentioned that he has a good bench of individuals that can at some point take on the mantle of leadership. But I don’t think that at the end of the day it’s not about whether Belize City or Belize District is the strength of the political power within any party I think that it’s up to the delegates of a party whenever that time comes around who will decide who they want to lead the party whenever that time comes. So for now, as I said,  my focus is to continue to work for Orange Walk East to ensure that we continue to support our Prime Minister and our leader in his quest and vision to build on Plan Belize and Plan Belize 2.0 so that we can achieve our objectives  until we could win a third term sometime down the road.”

Prime Minister Briceno had stated months ago that this term might be his last.  It was not said with conviction, however, and there have been indications that he just might seek a third term in office as the Prime Minister.