PM Barrow on CCJ’s Decision to Dismiss Bar’s Application

Dean Barrow

On Thursday a panel of CCJ Judges struck out an application by the Bar Association to be inserted as an interested party in the joint nationalization appeals in respect to Belize Electricity Limited and Belize Telemedia Limited. Those appeals have been stayed because compensation has been settled for the two utilities, and if the Bar had been successful, it may have affected those settlements adversely.  Prime Minister Dean Barrow is not surprised at the decision of the Caribbean Court of Justice.  He told us last week that the application would not fly, and today, reiterated a belief that the Bar’s move was politically motivated.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I understand what the Bar offers as its motivation, as its rationale for in fact filing that quite misguided action, that quite misguided application. But the fact is there are good lawyers in the Bar Association; there are good lawyers in what I would like to describe as the P.U.P. Bar Association and they really ought to have known better. If you say that you would wish some sort of a final determination as to the constitutionality of the Eighth Amendment and its basic structure doctrine, there is another way to go about it. They themselves admitted that they’ve also had their heads handed to them with respect to the challenge before the Court of Appeal, which reaffirms that the Laws of Belize does not include this basic structure doctrine…they will appeal that. And they will have a chance at that point to get the CCJ to make a final pronouncement. They ought to have waited on that man. I think it was quixotic; it was adventurous and unrealistic in the extreme and I have to feel then that politics was involved.”