B.P.M. Revisits Origin of Redistricting Claim
Robert “Bobby” Lopez
On Thursday, the Belize Peace Movement issued a statement, followed by an interview, on the conclusion of the redistricting exercise, as well as the recommendations made by the Re-division Task Force in its report. Those recommendations have all been met with serious concerns from both major political parties. But it’s the B.P.M. that initially filed the claim in the then Supreme Court before Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin. When the Chief Justice retired, the matter was carried over to Acting Chief Justice Michelle Arana. During our interview with Robert Lopez of the Belize Peace Movement, he provided additional details on the origin of the claim and how the subsequent consent order came to be.
Robert “Bobby” Lopez, Member, Belize Peace Movement
“Unfortunately this is an exercise that the commission should have done ten years ago when the OAS brought it to their attention after the 2012 election in their report, stating that there needed to be a re-division because the constituencies were not nearly as equal. In 2015 our group attempted to take it to court but it did not gain much traction. In 2018 is when we started our move, preempting the 2020 election to make sure that we could have a constitutional election and you will recall in the first sitting of the case before Judge Benjamin the government tried to have, through their attorneys, asked for our case to be struck out and Judge Benjamin was very straight forward in telling them that no this is a very legitimate case and that he was going to hear it. Of course you know that Judge Benjamin was later retired and then it went to Justice Arana and what have you. But, the UDP had a good year and a half to two years to fix the problem and they did not, instead they sought to fight ordinary citizens who just wanted to make sure their vote was equal to every other vote and then when we field an injunction to stop what we still believe was an unconstitutional election then both parities came at us with their top attorneys and they won that injunction in convinced the judge they had spent millions already in campaign financing and it was too late already to stop it. Be that as it may, we did win the consent order which forced them to do this redistricting and hand us a report, so oru case was stayed, it was only put on hold pending the result of this report and if this report is in conformity with the constitution then we are good to go.”
