BPM Takes Government to Court for Lack of Redistricting  

Next week, the Belize Peace Movement (BPM) is taking the Election and Boundaries Commission to court to argue that the overall voter’s list, known as schedule one, doesn’t meet constitutional requirements. It’s been several years since the Government of Belize promised to redistrict the country’s thirty-one constituencies to ensure each has a nearly equal number of voters, as outlined in the constitution. The BPM has been vocal in pushing for a faster redistricting process. We spoke with BPM member Paul Morgan for more details on the case.

 

Paul Morgan, Belize Peace Movement

 “The court’s supposed to be the guardian of that constitution. They should guard that thing zealously and jealously, and that the court shouldn’t hesitate to accept our case and expedited as if it was their own. Although our system is adversarial, we as citizens came to the court to say, listen, check this out. And it wasn’t the first one we filed in 2019, similar, but not the same. Before in 2019, we were just trying to force proposals, which they did, in this what I call a nonsensical proposal. They put together. They did that knowing that they wanted to stall. The judge in that first case. When we went to the judge to enforce the requirements that it was not constitutional, the proposals were not constitutional, the judge said that your case, you’re asking for reliefs that does not fit under this one this case. So please, you should go ahead and file another case, a fresh case. This is what we did. The government has delayed that case from November 21st, 2024 to this date, talking about that we as citizens would have forfeited our rights by signing a consent order with the government that they must produce these proposals. Totally ridiculous. How can citizens forfeit their fundamental rights?”