The PUP wants the court to throw out the UDP's victory in San Pedro in the March Municipal Elections. Well, today, Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamain listened to submissions from the attorneys for all the litigants as to why he should or should not uphold the petition. Tonight, the case is in his hands for a decision that should arrive in about 2 weeks' time.
The PUP 7 Municipal Slate from San Pedro alleges that there is a discrepancy over the total number of ballots from polling station #37 in the island town. They say that 275 ballots are not accounted for, and that those could have drastically affected the outcome of the elections, since Incumbent Mayor Daniel Guerrero and his team won by only a small margin.
You'll remember that at the last hearing, there was a 7-hour marathon of evidence taking and cross examination, where key witnesses such as the PUP's election scrutineers from San Pedro, Chief Elections Officer Josephine Tamai, and Returning Officer Catherine Cumberbatch, were all grilled about what they know, what they saw, and what they did on election night and after that.
Well today, the judge listened to the attorneys for the PUP 7, the Solicitor General, and the UDP 7's attorney presenting their interpretation of evidence and why it supports their positions. Now, depending on who you talk to, the 2 sides were claiming victory in the lawsuit for themselves.
So, we start tonight with our interview with the PUP's attorney, who's trying to get the election results nullified. Here's what he had to say when he came out of court this afternoon:
Eamon Courtenay, SC - Attorney for PUP
"We highlighted for the Chief Justice what we regard as a number of major irregularities, violations of the law. The first is, of course, the fact that the ballots and the papers related to it were unsealed, first by Miss Cumberbatch, because as you know, she changed the numbers on all of these papers, and then secondly by the Chief Elections Officer. We believe that the law is very clear. Regulation 84 and Regulation 89 prohibits and proscribes anyone from tampering with ballots and/or election papers after the counting is completed. And these were gross violations. Beyond that, the Chief Elections Officer was very clear that she and Mr. Zuniga counted the ballots when Miss Cumberbatch handed them over to her, and that nobody from the People's United Party was present. That is an absolute flagrant violation of the law, and what it does is that it undermines the integrity of the electoral process. My learned friends suggested that this type of violation is acceptable. That type of violation is minor; it is trivial, and the court should tolerate, and saying that the people in Battlefield Park would live with that type of treatment of an election. Well, as we submitted, we in the People's United Party do not accept that the Chief Elections Officer - or anyone else, for that matter - should have access to the ballots, and the papers, after the election. We in the People's United Party reject completely the notion that you can open the ballot papers, and open the envelopes, and take out the things, and deal with them, tamper with them, after we have left the counting room. That is, in our view, a violation of the basic tenets of Belizean democracy, and we are hoping that the Chief Justice accepts that those violations are significant, they're substantial, and enough to void the election."
Of course, the UDP's attorney, and the Solicitor General, who represented the Elections and Boundaries Commission, both say that the PUP failed to prove their case. From their perspective, the threshold to convince a judge to set aside an election is high, and that the PUP's did not meet it. Here's how they explained why:
Nigel Hawke - Solicitor General
"The matter is before the court for deliberation now. So, I can't comment much. What I will say is that we made our submissions. Our submissions are fundamentally based on the fact that they are challenging the results based on ballots that are unaccounted for, when the evidence suggests, by their own witnesses, that used ballots have been accounted for. So, we say that there is a great paradox here. Why did they bring the petition, if they accepted that the ballots used determines the results? But, we have to wait for the judgement of the court."
Estevan Perrera - Attorney for UDP
"The onus remains on the petitioners themselves. They are the ones who are supposed to prove what they say occurred, if anything did occur. Now, our position is simple. Simply because the petitioners said that a fire exist, doesn't make that so. They have to prove it to the court. They have to show, and they have to provide evidence of this. We are saying that they failed to provide any evidence clearly substantiating their position that a fire did in fact exist. We're saying that there was no irregularity. There were minor miscalculations in the form, like what we had informed you previously. And we're saying that the law contemplates that there will be errors done by persons at the counting because of the time that it takes place, the amount of events or actions happening therein. And so, it is expected that there will be some minor errors, and that's why the law is very specific. It says that minor discrepancies or errors does not invalidate the actual election."
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