P.C.C.’s Mission: Make the Constitution More Belizean

Cesar Ross

Today, the Chairman and the Deputy Chair of the People’s Constitutional Commission met with Leader of the Opposition Shyne Barrow. On Wednesday, a meeting of the P.C.C. plenary will be held to discuss the launch of the consultative process.  The secretariat has also been engaging with tertiary institutions and attending events to create awareness about the expectations of the restructuring of the constitution and its implications. Ross says the goal is to make the Constitution of Belize more Belizean.

Cesar Ross, Director, Good Governance Unit

“From our independence, we keep looking at certain areas of the constitution that we need to do better, that we need to twist so that it is more representative, it is more quote unquote Belizean, as such. There are two schools of thought out there – that one is saying that the constitution we got in ’81 was given to us by our colonizers and then there is the school of thought that says that there was consultation and a white paper was produced and it is at the archives and through that process there was how to put it together. And the truth is somewhere in the middle where there was some consultation, there was a white paper produced as such by the political class of the country, as such, but the colonial the motherland, the colonial government did want some things  in there that they insisted and they pushed. And because at that point Guatemala was a very sensitive topic, there were compromises that we might not have been comfortable with. We cannot do it where the I.C.J. one worked where we went into one area came out go to another area – no. What we have done is divided the country into four zones and we are getting four teams up to capacity and the four teams are going to launch in those four zones simultaneously, and be covering schools, tertiary level institutions and they are offering their teachers and students as well, facilitating outreach to the villages in those areas. And so we are hoping that those four teams can do a blanket and that way rather than go segment by segment by segment, we do that type of thing there and that should save us a lot of time. And of course, we need the secretariat which is us, the secretariat of the commission has to be getting all that data, data analysis, doing all of that and putting all the information together and every couple weeks, providing to the larger PCC, the commissioners, this is what that area has been recommending as such. And beginning to put together so that they know what ideas are out there.”