Court rules that rogue citrus growers can have a separate association
Hubert Elrington
A ruling was handed down today in a case that will have a bearing on the future of the embattled citrus industry that has been pitting the Citrus Growers Association against the Citrus Products of Belize Limited. A group of six growers who sell and deliver citrus to the Citrus Products of Belize, took the Attorney General, the Citrus Control Board, the Citrus Growers Association and the C.P.B.L. to court last year in August on the grounds that the Citrus Processing and Production Act hindered them from exercising their right to freedom of association and denied them the opportunity to gain their living. The background is that the growers had resigned from the CGA and wanted confirmation that since they no longer belonged to the association, they could still continue selling and delivering citrus to the CPBL. This morning Justice Minnet Hafiz handed down a thirty-one page ruling in which she found that the Act as it stood was in contravention of the constitution. The case was similar to one successfully brought before the court by the United Cane Farmers Association, a breakaway group from the established Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association from the north. News Five got a reaction after the ruling from Senior Counsel Hubert Elrington, who represented United Cane Farmers and who followed this case.
Hubert Elrington, Attorney
“You have a situation where the Citrus Growers Association was set up by the law, the Cane Farmers Association was set up by the law, and you have different other associations. And then the law also went on to provide that the members of these legally established organizations had to pay monies called cess to run their associations and things like that, whether they want it to or not. The problem with that is that under the Independence Constitution you cannot have a situation where the legislature can pass a law establishing an association. If a person wants to belong to an association he can, if people want to set up an association they can. But the government and the legislature cannot set up associations and tell people you must belong to associations and you must pay associations’ fees or cess or things like that. So what should have been done immediately after independence, a commission consisting of lawyers and other people who are involved in public business should have come together to examine the constitution to see which parts of the laws are not in conformity with the constitution. They would have found out all those years ago that the citrus growers association, the cane farmers association, and the other associations that were established under law, they would have found out long ago that they were unconstitutional.”
“But now they are finding it out; we could have had the same mess—because it’s a real mess up there in the citrus belt. It’s going to create unbelievable problems. We could have had the same thing in the north where the United Cane Farmers had been challenging the Cane Farmers Association on the grounds that it was unconstitutional but we chose to go the way of negotiations. We have negotiated with them, we have negotiated with the Attorney General and his ministry and we have said that we are going to bring this thing to a head but we are going to do it in such a way that there will not be all the uproar and all the quarrels and all the fights. We will do it quietly and we will concentrate on getting the industry and its workers and its producers working together and seeing what the constitution really requires them to do and to do it in a cooperative spirit. But that is not what the association wanted. Led by Marcel Cardona as their advisor, they wanted to fight the thing. I think that now with this judgment they will realize that they have no more fight in them. They have to sit down and do the thing in a sensible way.”
Justice Hafiz granted an injunction to restrain the Citrus Control Board and the CGA from issuing licenses to sell or deliver citrus only to members of the CGA and further restrained the CPBL from purchasing or taking deliveries of citrus only from members of the CGA. The six growers are HTA Bowman, Emerald Groves, Ernest Raymond Kerbo Farms and Alva and Jorge Rosado.
