Belize Peace Movement Rejects Redistricting Report

The Belize Peace Movement has also voiced its rejection of the Elections and Boundaries Commission’s re-division report. As claimants of the 2019 High Court Redistricting Case, the commission was mandated by a consent order to submit the report to the Belize Peace Movement. The claimants received the report on Wednesday and met with their attorney to review the report. Following their review, B.P.M. found that while there were improvements in some areas across the country, as it relates to the equality of votes, there were still some areas that quote, fall far short of the constitutional mandate for equality of votes across constituencies, unquote.  As a result, the Belize Peace Movement says it rejects the report and deems it unconstitutional. We spoke with Robert “Bobby” Lopez, a member of the Belize Peace Movement.

Robert “Bobby” Lopez

Robert “Bobby” Lopez, Member, Belize Peace Movement

“Yesterday we were sent our official copy and last night the group of claimants met with our attorneys to look at the first review of what the report is saying and certainly what jumps out of all of us is that it certainly deviates from international norms that as the prime minister said is quite common, at the fifteen percent, or as the special expert to the court had in his report, it is ten to fifteen percent. Many democracies only have a five percent deviation and I think the extreme is North or South Korea at thirty-three and a third percent and way off the norm. So, certainly we concur with the prime minister that it really shouldn’t be anywhere more than between ten to fifteen percent. So, what does the report say? The report gives two percentages, a deviation of plus minus twenty-five percent for thirty constituencies and then makes an allowance of thirty-five percent for Belize Rural South which happens to be one of the largest constituency and also the fastest growing constituency in voter population. That will not fly.”