Elections and Boundaries continues preparation for elections notwithstanding redistricting case

Published by BBN Staff at October 26, 2020

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Posted: Monday, October 26, 2020. 2:42 pm CST.

By Aaron Humes: Chief Elections Officer Josephine Tamai and her staff are the busiest workers in Belize at the moment as they prepare for the highlight of their working calendar: a General Election.

But events on Wednesday, October 28 in the Supreme Court may pre-empt all of that, if the Belize PEACE Movement is able to get their asked-for injunction postponing elections until the issue of redistricting is sorted out.

The Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) is bound to present recommendations for equalizing the number of voters in each electoral divisions as much as possible, provided there are no less than 28 divisions and no more than 31 per the Constitution.

The PEACE Movement’s litigants, joined by Lord Michael Ashcroft as an interested party, submit that the EBC has failed to do that for the past few years, and that as a result they are disenfranchised because the largest electoral divisions take more resources and ground to cover than the smallest.

The National Assembly has already been dissolved, but there are provisions in the Constitution for it to meet outside of its standard term of five years.

None of that will dissuade the CEO, who says preparations must and have continued so that they are not caught off-guard.

She said however that the EBC/EBD will abide by whatever the court decides.

At least one candidate, Arthur Saldivar in Belmopan, refused to be nominated last week Wednesday on the basis of the pending arguments for an injunction; he is the lead attorney on the BPM case with Senior Counsel Andrew Marshalleck.

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