Cesar Ross Heads People’s Constitutional Commission

Henry Charles Usher

Minister of Constitutional and Political Reform, Henry Charles Usher also weighed in on the work of the commission which will be activated in the days ahead.  Viewers would recall that the People’s Constitutional Commission succeeds a piece of legislation that was introduced in parliament last Friday. The commission is being headed by Cesar Ross, a former lecturer at the University of Belize.

Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Constitutional Reform

“I was very proud and honored to be the one to introduce that bill in the House of Representatives last Friday. It was introduced for first reading and I do believe that the house committee will meet on this particular bill on Monday in the house committee. So the bill is a very critical one, if you remember, we’ve had this exercise one time before where we had a constitutional reform commission being done in 1999. That particular commission did not have legislative backing. It was done through the office of the prime minister and of course they made some recommendations and I believe that two-thirds of those recommendations were accepted. This time we felt that we had to have the legislative backing so that’s why we have put in place the People’s Constitutional Commission Bill which we hope to pass into law at the next sitting of the House of Representatives and thereafter at the Senate. Contained in that bill is the establishment of the secretariat for this commission which is the Good Governance Unit. That unit has been established, it has been staffed, they have been operational now for a month and so they have been working. The head of that unit is a former lecturer at the U.B., Mr. Cesar Ross, and the unit contains a lot of young persons interested in reform, interested in research and certainly interested in the development of their country. So I’m happy to see that interest from young people.”