CCJ revives challenge to Belize’s electoral boundaries

Derek Achong

The Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) has re­sus­ci­tat­ed a con­tro­ver­sial case over the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Be­lize's elec­toral bound­aries.

On Mon­day, CCJ Pres­i­dent Win­ston An­der­son and judges Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee, Pe­ter Ja­madar, Chan­tal Onon­ai­wu, and Chile Eboe-Os­u­ji up­held an ap­peal brought by an ac­tivist over a de­ci­sion by Be­lize's Court of Ap­peal to refuse to hear a chal­lenge to the dis­missal of his con­sti­tu­tion­al claim.

The pan­el ruled that the Court of Ap­peal was wrong to have dis­missed Je­re­my En­riquez on tech­ni­cal grounds.

The judges al­so took is­sue with the fact that the judge who first heard the case made a "wast­ed costs" or­der against En­riquez's lawyer, Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, for pur­su­ing the case.

The out­come of the ap­peal means that the mat­ter will now have to be con­sid­ered by Be­lize's Court of Ap­peal at a lat­er date.

In March last year, En­riquez and two oth­er ac­tivists sought an in­junc­tion to stop the coun­try's gen­er­al elec­tion, as they were dis­sat­is­fied with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's re­sponse to their re­quest that Be­lize Prime Min­is­ter John Briceño give them ad­vance no­tice of his de­ci­sion to ad­vise the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al on the dis­so­lu­tion of the coun­try's Na­tion­al As­sem­bly to fa­cil­i­tate the poll.

Two fur­ther amend­ed ap­pli­ca­tions were made af­ter Briceño an­nounced the de­ci­sion and set March 12 for the elec­tion.

In de­cid­ing the ap­pli­ca­tions, Jus­tice Tawan­da Hon­do­ra took is­sue with two af­fi­davits pur­port­ed­ly sworn by En­riquez in sup­port of the ap­pli­ca­tions.

He not­ed that it ap­peared that En­riquez's sig­na­ture and that of the High Court Com­mis­sion­er, who pur­port­ed­ly wit­nessed his de­po­si­tion, were dig­i­tal­ly added to the court doc­u­ment.

Jus­tice Hon­do­ra said: "There is more than a whiff that some­one was giv­en dig­i­tal copies of the de­po­nent's and the Com­mis­sion­er's sig­na­tures and in­sert­ed those in­to the af­fi­davit said to be that of Mr En­riquez and the oth­er doc­u­ments used in this mat­ter."

"If that be the case, it rais­es nu­mer­ous ques­tions of who did that, un­der what au­thor­i­ty they did so, and why they con­sid­ered it nec­es­sary and ap­pro­pri­ate to use dig­i­tal tem­plates," he added.

Jus­tice Hon­do­ra not­ed that Ram­lo­gan par­tic­i­pat­ed in the hear­ing be­fore him via video con­fer­enc­ing as he was not in Be­lize, and that En­riquez re­ferred to a law firm in Be­lize City.

He point­ed out that Ram­lo­gan did not re­fer to the law firm when he an­nounced who was rep­re­sent­ing the trio at the hear­ing.

Based on the anom­alies he found, which he de­scribed as in­ex­plic­a­ble, Jus­tice Hon­do­ra de­cid­ed to dis­re­gard the af­fi­davits and con­se­quent­ly dis­miss the ap­pli­ca­tions.

The elec­tion was held as sched­uled, with Briceño's Peo­ple's Unit­ed Par­ty (PUP) se­cur­ing a sec­ond term in of­fice by a land­slide.

En­riquez ap­pealed the find­ings, as Ram­lo­gan de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

How­ev­er, his chal­lenge was dis­missed by Be­lize's Court of Ap­peal on the ba­sis that it was pre­ma­ture, as Jus­tice Hon­do­ra had not "per­fect­ed" his or­der.

In its rul­ing, the CCJ found that the tim­ing of the ap­peal did not in­val­i­date it, not­ing that lit­i­gants should not be de­nied ac­cess to jus­tice based on pro­ce­dur­al tech­ni­cal­i­ties.

It al­so found that the or­der against Ram­lo­gan was un­jus­ti­fied.

In a press re­lease, En­riquez hailed the out­come.

"The CCJ has en­sured that the sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues—fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion, elec­toral equal­i­ty, and ju­di­cial con­duct—will be heard and de­cid­ed," En­riquez said.

"The le­gal hur­dles and tech­ni­cal­i­ties could have frus­trat­ed and dis­cour­aged us, but they did not, as we main­tained our fo­cus: no po­lit­i­cal par­ty, no prime min­is­ter, no min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment—no one—is above the supreme law of the na­tion," he added.

He al­so thanked Ram­lo­gan for pur­su­ing the ap­peal.

"The de­ci­sion not on­ly re­stores Ram­lo­gan's pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing but al­so sends a strong mes­sage across the re­gion about pro­tect­ing lawyers who coura­geous­ly de­fend pub­lic-in­ter­est cas­es," En­riquez said.

He said he is ea­ger­ly await­ing the even­tu­al hear­ing of the ap­peal.