John Briceño object to 100s of registrations

Before the announcement of the date for general elections, there was a rush to naturalize thousands of immigrants and register them to vote. One U.D.P. Minister even admitted to paying the registration fees for those in his constituency. But there have been reports of fraudulent addresses and bribery. This morning in Orange Walk, Area Representative John Briceño went to court to object to hundreds of registrations. Outside the courts in Orange Walk Town, a big group of political supporters gathered on the outskirts of the court grounds, while inside attorneys were presenting their objections.

Dickie Bradley, Attorney

Dickie Bradley

“The law makes it a requirement—mandatory will be a better word—the law says that a registering officer, the official from the Elections and Boundaries Office, shall publish the list in the Gazette and in a newspaper. Whoever is the registering officer up here in Orange Walk is required by law to see that the list of those persons who are being objected to is published and apparently in Belmopan we are getting to understand that there is no evidence in the court that there was any publication. If the list isn’t published, the magistrate cannot hear objections which means all those people will stay on the voters list and so we come to the court today on behalf of Honorable Johnny Briceno, who will easily be returned to office, and that is the reason why they are pushing on all these new citizens on the voters list; so we come to Orange Walk and the first step we wanted to ensure, is where is the proof that you published the list? There is evidence that a lot of these people, if not all of these people have been put into addresses, where in fact the people who live there don’t even know them—in one case the address is a warehouse. When we went to look there isn’t even a cut or mattress—nobody lives there or sleeps there. The owner said excuse me I don’t know those people. We need to get them off the voters list. The Constitution says to be a citizen in this blessed nation of ours, you must live here, reside here, for five years continuously. Continuously means that when I take my dorey and tie it on piece a mangrove; dah one rope di go from the rope to the mangrove. You live here for five years. The laws weh they gone put to make those people citizens say that they reside here ordinarily. Ordinarily is not continuously; continuously is continuously, [while] ordinarily means that sometime I deh dah Mexico, sometimes I deh dah Belize, sometimes I deh dah Miami, sometimes I deh dah Belize. So those citizenship can be struck down as being in violation of the constitution. The Representation of People Act says that when you go to apply to be a voter, you must have been a citizen and you must reside in the electoral division for not less than two months. Now if you get your citizenship the nineteenth of January, how di twentieth you are on the voters list? How three days after you are on the voters list? Because you have to first be a citizen and then live in the division for not less than two months and then you could go apply. On the date of your application you must be living there two months. You just get your citizen one week and the next week you are a voter in the country. So that is a big, big problem; that is a very serious problem. So what you have in Orange Walk is that over a hundred voters that can be found in this short period of time are not eligible to vote, they are not to be on the voters list.”

While the law states that the registering officer is responsible for publishing the list, he told the court that they compiled the information and forwarded the documents to the Belize City office. This afternoon, it was revealed that the list was in fact published, but after the case started. Attorneys for both sides then agreed to an adjournment for next week. In Belmopan, a similar exercise took place, but according to Patrick Menzies, who is challenging some names, he will now have to head to the Supreme Court because the Magistrate says she could not deal with the matter, also over the issue of publication of the list.