Are Members of the Appeals Tribunal Really Impartial?

Orlando Habet

Minister Habet further explained that the purpose of the tribunal is to ensure that the process that was followed by NEAC, as well as the Department of the Environment, was fair to Waterloo.  He also shared details on the selection process.

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development

“Some names came up and I think that Mrs. Lucy Fleming was selected to be that person.  She has been involved in the tourism sector which pertains to what happens within the sea.  Also, I think she has been involved with BTIA as a president, I think with the BTB for a long time and so she’s the second person that will be representing the tribunal.  The third person, we had to get somebody who was a professional.  We looked around Belize trying to see that nobody had been involved in some way or the other so as not to have that same conflict or perception of conflict of interest.  So we decided to go out, we looked at the Caribbean, we looked at a few people.  And then we went extra-regionally and we looked at people from England and Australia and everywhere else and we finally honed down on looking at Professor Terry Hughes who is from Cooke’s University in Australia.  He has a vast experience in terms of reef management.  He’s originally born in Ireland and moved down to the Caribbean for a while and worked in Jamaica and then he moved to the US for two years and finally ended up in Australia, working along the largest coral reef in the world.  So he is the third person that is now forming the tribunal.”

Isani Cayetano

“With the exception of the judge, it would seem and perhaps this can be corroborated elsewhere that Lucy Fleming has published, as well as Terry Hughes has put his own position against cruise tourism in the first instance.  Do you believe that this will create a perceived bias, considering the fact that they have put forward their position previously on a matter such as this?”

Orlando Habet

“I believe that the persons in the business sector would have their own opinions.  We really didn’t go into doing research on their positions.  We were trying to stay at the local level since we were trying to find somebody from the business community that would be as open-minded as possible.”