Court will hear B.T.I.A. application

It took a while but after several delays the Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Belize Tourism Industry Association to proceed with its application for judicial review of the Carnival Cruise Port contract. B.T.I.A. president Lucy Flemming explained the implications of the decision.

Lucy Flemming, President, B.T.I.A.
?We were heard by the Supreme Court Justice Awich on whether our application for judicial review would be heard at a Supreme Court level. He had two things to decide. First of all, whether B.T.I.A. had a Locus Standi and also whether our challenges had merit to proceed further with the case.?

Stewart Krohn
?So this was just a procedural hurdle that you?ve gotten over and the real meet of the decision will come when??

Lucy Flemming
?Well it will come–yes, this was basically to hear whether the application had merit so it?s the first stage. That was approved today. So the real meet of the matter will be when the judicial review actually does take place and that will have to happen basically within the next ninety days.?

Stewart Krohn
?Lucy, there are people who say that this fight in the Supreme Court is really less about the law and more about trying humbug any deal that Carnival wants to do. In other words, that even if this contract that you are saying is unconstitutional, even if it were fully constitutional it wouldn?t make a difference to you and B.T.I.A. because really all you want to do is get rid of cruise tourism. How do you react to something like that??

Lucy Flemming
?Well, I react actually quite appal by that type of a statement because as you know, we?ve always supported cruise tourism. In all of our press releases we?ve supported cruise tourism; a lot of our tourism colleagues are involved in cruise tourism. What we do support is sustainable growth of any of our tourism sectors and that includes cruise tourism itself. So basically, we do not want to humbug Carnival or their investment. We just want to make sure that they apply to our rules, our regulations, hire our Belizean people and although you know, one would expect that with a deal of this magnitude, that they would have certain concessions. One would expect that. But we don?t think that the concession should be so one sided that they do not apply to our rules, regulations and fare play in a fare play, playing field.?

It is not clear what effect, if any, the court action is having on commencement of the hundred million dollar Carnival project, which includes a cruise terminal in Port Loyola along with hotel, casino, shops and other attractions.