As you heard, the attorneys for the Government and the Ashcroft Alliance are expected to try to make earnest attempts at settling the payment terms out-of-court. If they cannot do so, they will go back before the CCJ on next week Thursday, when the court will give a decision.
But, should this currency fight between them actually be happening? That's what we asked both sides because we told you, this fight has been ongoing for 7 years now. The Settlement at the Permanent Council on Arbitration was supposed to the end-all for the BTL saga. But, in less than a month after it was finalized, the Government and Ashcroft were back to quarrelling before the Court.
Well, after the CCJ heard from both attorneys on their diverging interpretation, the judges found the source of the problem: they say the BTL settlement agreement was poorly drafted. The attorneys, trying to anticipate all the variables surrounding this settlement, tried to tie up all loose ends. What they ended up doing, however, is to create a confounding mess of clauses which is open to different interpretations, based on which side is reading the document. It was also revealed that the terms of this benefit for the Belizean public was not carefully carved out. You'll remember it as the centerpiece of Prime Minister Barrow's sales pitch as to why the half-a-billion dollar settlement was still not so bad. The Government's position is that part of the award, 60% to be exact, is to be paid in Belize dollars into a Trust to be spent on projects for the Belizean people. Denys Barrow tried his hardest to convince the CCJ judges that this was the spirit of the compromise from GOB, but at the end of today's hearing, they were not convinced, simply because the document does not explicitly state this.
Here now is the CCJ Judges talking about the knotted wording of the BTL judgment:
Courtenay also made the point that all the attorneys in the case perused the documents, made comments on it, and nobody red-flagged these issues with the agreement.
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