I.C.J. Referendum Date is Final. It Will Not Be Postponed!

Dean Barrow

The date for eligible voters to determine whether the territorial dispute between Belize and Guatemala should go before the I.C.J. is fixed.  The referendum will be held on April tenth, 2019 and, according to PM Barrow, there is no possibility of postponing the exercise.  The Leader of the Opposition, in a one-on-one with the prime minister recently, asked for the referendum to be deferred until after the 2020 general elections.  But, the PM could not be swayed, particularly since he says there is more than enough time between both democratic processes.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“The I.C.J. referendum date is April tenth, 2019 and we have no intention of changing that date.  Apart from his public statements, the Leader of the Opposition had raised privately with me the possibility of a postponement when we met a little over a week ago.  But I did not find the reasons offered for the suggestion at all convincing especially since the postponement the PUP leader wanted was until after the November 2020 elections.  The arguments for postponement, as I understood them, was that April tenth, 2019 is too close to November 2020 and to hold the referendum as scheduled would somehow contaminate it with partisan electoral campaigning for 2020.  But unless there is a deliberate P.U.P. plan to do that to have that happen, the year and a half between April tenth, 2019 and November 2019 would surely provide enough of a firewall distance between the two events.  Then it was most recently said by the Leader of the Opposition that the fact that our I.C.J. legal brief is not yet fully formalized is another reason for postponement.  But again, that makes no sense.  Why would we completely finalize our I.C.J. preparations before we even know if we are going to the I.C.J.”