Attorney Godfrey Smith questions 9th Amendment

Godfrey Smith

Earlier in the newscast, we reported that government was backing down on specific language proposed in the ninth amendment. Government is removing the section that bars court enquiry into the validity of any law passed to alter the Constitution. Attorney-at-law Godfrey Smith appeared on our OYE Show today and cleared up that the government did intend to bar the court from reviewing cases on the constitution.

Godfrey Smith, Attorney at Law

“Go back and look at the facts it’s always there. Two days before that House Meeting on July twenty second when the ninth amendment was introduced, the Prime Minister was asked by a media house, channel 7 in fact, and he was asked ‘Isn’t this ninth amendment just a way to protect nationalization from another legal attack?’ And the Prime Minister said, ‘I would think that in enshrining ownership in the Constitution is in fact protection against the challenge to that ownership.  So I think that yes you ask a very good question, the answer to that is yes.’ So the government I think has been duplicitous, two-faced about the thing. From the very beginning, their intention, their objective was to say weh we di do no court could intervene.”

Dean Barrow

Dean Barrow

“There are only four clauses to the bill the main purpose of which is to entrench the government’s control over public utilities and to place the nationalization of Belize Telemedia Limited and the nationalization of Belize Electricity Limited on an unchallengeable footing.”