A mighty public uproar erupted last week when BTL held its annual general
meeting against the order of an injunction from the Supreme Court. But what
started with a resounding bang may end with a muted whimper. 8 working days
have passed since the AGM and Jeff Prosser's attorney Lionel Welch has still
not asked the court to find BTL in contempt, and, according to BTL, it still
has not been properly served with the injunction notice. And more than that,
BTL has paid out the dividends approved at its AGM. That means that whether
the AGM was legal or ill-legal, checks have been issued, deposited and cashed.
It's been a learning experience for everyone, and the University of Belize,
eager to engage its students in social debate, yesterday tried to crystallize
the lessons of the entire scenario with a students forum at its main campus
in Belmopan. The administration invited Senator Godwin Hulse, our Jules Vasquez
and Free Zone guru Arturo Lizarraga to discuss the implication and meaning of
the "ICC versus BTL versus the Supreme Court" battle royale. Never
one for understatement: Lizarraga put it in context thusly: there have been
three major events in the past 25 years of Belizean history, and the first was
independence. We'll let him tell you about the second and third.
Arturo Lizarraga, Presenter
"The other is 1974 when we had a smooth transfer of democratic power
and the third one is when the Chief Justice ruled that an SI was unconstitutional
because first of all, for the first time we're defining the separation of power
as it exists in the minds of people and as it exists, from the perspective of
the court. So why would they have a law and then the executive can determine
what is right or wrong? What that creates is fear because people no longer believe
the legal system can work.
And in this case, what transpired within the courts is that the judge decided
that the Executive had overstepped its bounds in terms of where they can determine.
The Executive was applying itself as judge, determine to take away the benefit
from an individual who was Jeffrey Prosser, in terms of his right to the company."
Senator Godwin Hulse, Presenter
"Because the action gave the perception that big boys, big companies
can just dish the courts, snub and thumb their nose at the law and at the courts
which we consider a bastion of our democracy, to put some of the words that
have been going around, then when we understand, perhaps as we may, perhaps
as we may, that they did nothing legally wrong, then we need to enact a process
where we will then create legislation to prevent that kind of action in the
future so that our sensitivities and our perceptions are no longer insulted.
It is to wet your appetite, to challenge you to begin to think at 25, all
of these things you see happening that are disturbing your sensitivities stem
out of the fact that in 1981 September 20th when the Act was signed, the Belize
Constitution Act, somebody picked up a booklet of laws and said, 'this is how
you will be governed,' and we continued to think it out a little bit and that
is how we are governed. It is time we sit down and call in this very university
a preliminary constitutional conference to decide at 25 how we want to govern
ourselves.
We have ample experience. We see all the things we don't like. We've seen
Social Security and DFC and all the rest of things we don't like and Channel
7 keeps up well up to date. Sit down and decide how are we going to prevent
these and let it not be that the next twenty five years we are saying, 'you
see what they did, you see what they said, you see BTL by that time might have
another name;' they will do it again at the 50th anniversary. I might not be
around to see that and let me not be in my grave hearing that."
The 15 minute presentations were followed by a lively question and answer
session between members of the panel and students.
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