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Mar 9, 2018

Eamon Courtenay Confirms Court Challenge

Eamon Courtenay

Following the interview with Briceño in Belmopan, the P.U.P.’s legal advisor, Eamon Courtenay, in an interview with Ambergris Today this afternoon, confirmed that the party will take court action on the San Pedro results because of the discrepancy in the number of ballots. Courtenay further says that the P.U.P. is calling for a new election in San Pedro.

 

Eamon Courtenay, Legal Advisor, P.U.P.

“The party leader got reports as a result of the elections and was very concerned that there appeared to be significant discrepancies and therefore, he deployed a team from the secretariat to assist our people on the ground in San Pedro. We had our lawyers as well as our experts from the secretariat who are versed in counting and the reports coming into us through last night into this morning was that significant discrepancies have been found. Just now they came in and briefed me as the legal advisor to the party. Based on the briefing that they have given to us, there is absolutely no doubt that there have been significant discrepancies. The reports that we got from our people, politically, is that we had won that election. Now as a result of the official papers—and I want to confirm that the official papers that we have that were signed off by the Elections and Boundaries Commission and our people when we attempt to reconcile them, there are two hundred and seventy-five ballots that cannot be accounted for at minimum. Now two hundred and seventy-five ballots as you well know puts the election in dispute. I have at least four lawyers who are on standby and who have looked at this and they say we are going to court. And so after briefing the party leader, the decision has been taken in consultation with the San Pedro branch of the party that we are moving forward to the courts because we believe that we have been robbed by the elections in San Pedro. I want to emphasize a couple of things: the first is that there has been a reawakening, a rebirth of the party in San Pedro, the likes of Manuel Heredia and mayor are shocked and surprised by how close they think the election is. In fact, our numbers are showing that we won the election. And so we the party is mobilizing all the resources to fight; we are going to fight for every vote and we expect that as a result of the recount and the re-election, there will be a P.U.P. town council in San Pedro. One point I want to make very clear…when you have two hundred and seventy-five ballots that cannot be accounted for, we don’t know where those ballots are today, so we don’t want a box that is opened that has those two hundred and seventy-five ballots in there and then they tell us that they have won by a bigger margin. There needs to be a new election in San Pedro and that is what we are going to be fighting for in the courts.”


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