B.T.L. forced to roll back rates

Tonight, the Government of Belize is claiming victory after the Supreme Court ruled in its favour in the ongoing B.T.L. saga. Late Friday night in a surprise move, G.O.B.’s lawyers: Denys Barrow, Eamon Courtenay and Elson Kaseke, informed Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh that the stop order had been incorporated into a statutory instrument and would be published in the Gazette over the weekend. It was a tactic that caught the B.T.L. lawyers totally off guard since that placed the stop order beyond the reach of the judicial review that B.T.L. was seeking. Today Attorney General Godfrey Smith explained to News 5 what the ruling will mean to your telephone bill.

Godfrey Smith, Attorney General

“It takes the form of an S.I., which itself forms part in parcel of the body of law that you cannot bring the usual judicial review application to challenge it. In effect, you’d have to bring something else to challenge an existing piece of legislation. So on those grounds, the Chief Justice refused to comply with the request, the prayer on behalf of B.T.L. lawyers to grant leave for judicial review. That being the case then, it was left to B.T.L. to decide whether they would respond to the Minister Responsible for Telecommunication’s letter, which was issued Thursday or on the twenty-fourth. And today we got a correspondence from B.T.L.’s attorney, Ms. Lois Young Barrow, indicating that they would be complying with the order. The effect of that should be that telephone rates should be rolled back to where they was pre December first.”