Election & Boundaries Commission Seeks to Strikeout Redistricting Case

Paul Morgan

An application to strike out the re-districting case brought before the Supreme Court by the Belize Peace Movement has been filed by Senior Counsel Oscar Sabido, Chair of the Elections and Boundaries Commission.  The matter went before the court in October 2019 and is scheduled to be heard in the coming weeks. But in his application, Chairman Sabido summarized two reasons, including the fact that the claimants failed to file witness statements when they were required to do so.  Despite the setback, the court issued directives for both parties to negotiate, with a view to settling the matter.  Nonetheless, the Elections and Boundaries Commission reportedly broke off the deliberations and rejected several proposals by the claimants for settlement.  News Five spoke with Paul Morgan, treasurer of the Belize Peace Movement.

Paul Morgan, Belize Peace Movement

“The chairman of the Elections and Boundaries Commission filed an application to strike out the case which is before the court, the re-divisioning case before the court.  His grounds were two: first, that the Elections and Boundaries Commission complains that the claimants did not file their witness statements in time and in fact that is true.  The statements were filed two days late, but again, there was a problem with the portal, the court portal and why our attorney couldn’t file in time.  Actually, we sent a process server to physically file at the court, but he couldn’t do that because the court had already changed the system of filing, so we were two days late.  The second reason the chairman gave was that they were already setting up administration to begin the re-divisioning process and those were his grounds.  To that we say that setting up an administration to do re-divisioning does not satisfy the requirements of the constitution which is to have the divisions near equal.  It is like if a man is hungry and he smells food, it is not good enough, he must eat food.  Therefore, we need the re-divisioning to happen and I believe that the honorable court will see that simply setting up an administration and asking for the court to dismiss or strikeout the case will not be enough.  That we were late in filing, there is a good reason for that, and I ask that the public joins us in clamoring for fair representation in this country, as we go through with this case.”