CCJ Dismisses Bar Association’s Application

Denys Barrow

With great dispatch, the Caribbean Court of Justice this morning threw out the application of the Bar Association to release the stay on the joint appeals before that Court in respect of the nationalizations of Belize Electricity Limited and Belize Telemedia Limited. The settlement of protracted litigation between G.O.B. and both Fortis and the Ashcroft Group caused the CCJ to stay the matter. The Bar contended that notwithstanding the settlements, the public had a right to know the decision, particularly as regards the CCJ’s determination on the controversial Eighth Amendment. This morning, all parties convened before the CCJ panel of judges via teleconference from the Supreme Court. It was a very short affair, with the Judges determining in less than ten minutes that the application by the Bar had no merit since the matter had been settled. Attorneys Eamon Courtenay for Fortis/BCB/Dunkeld International and Denys Barrow for the Government of Belize spoke on the matter.

Denys Barrow, Attorney for G.O.B.

“It’s not something I say very easily or readily, but the Bar really was misguided. They allowed themselves to be led by a political motivation in making this application. Had they thought about it properly…had they distanced themselves from the politics which drove them, they would not have made this application. You saw what took place. The Court gave them the opportunity to persuade the Court why they should not refuse the application, gave them very short shrift, did not even call on any of the other lawyers to say anything…just said you have basically wasted your time.”

Eamon Courtenay

Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for Fortis/BCB/Dunkeld Intl.

“The difficulty with the Bar Association’s application is that, apart from it being so late as the Court pointed out…the difficulty is that this is an appeal between the government and the respective parties and those parties have settled their differences. Now the Bar wants to come into the Court and in fact their application was to oppose the granting of the stay that the Court ordered, and it is rather difficult to comprehend where the two live parties have settled their differences, for a third party to come in and say I want you to stop that and not grant them a stay. The Bar also wanted the Court to hand down the decision on the public law issues…by that they mean the Amendment to Section Two, Section Sixty-nine and the addition of Part thirteen of the Constitution. Once the parties had settled their differences, that became academic. The difficulty why we had to oppose it was that if the Court was to hand down a decision even though it is academic, it would be on the record and people would jump on it and use it to say that oh the settlement can be undermined because the Court had said this and said that and so the finality that we had hoped for and the finality that we achieved would not have been achieved. And the prejudice to the settlement was likely, and so for those reasons we certainly had to oppose it.”