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Postpone The ICJ Referendum? Briceno thinks So!
posted (October 24, 2018)
The ICJ referendum set for April 10, 2019 is five and a half months away - that's only 168 days from now, and, tonight, the Leader of the Opposition is warning that it might have to be postponed.

John Briceno says government has wasted time - and now it is too far behind in the public education campaign, and the compilation of the case. He's saying Government is not ready - and it should be thinking about a postponement:

Hon. John Briceno, Leader of the Opposition
"I've been calling them out saying that the educational campaign has not been robust enough. They've set the date since April this year. The minister is talking looking about ramping up. They had ample time to be able to do that. We are calling them out because whilst the foreign minister is saying oh we have the same lawyers that the PUP had. We don't see a plan. At least I have not seen it as to what is the budget, how much money are we going to be needing to be able to go to the ICJ? Have we set aside the monies? Do we have the right people doing all the necessary research? The preparation of going to court? We don't see any of that. How are you going to take out the people to vote for the referendum? It is the political parties that take out the vote that would get people to go out to vote. How is that going to happen? Is the government addressing that? There are so many issues that they are not addressing and lastly, April 10th, 2019, by that time we are getting into full campaign mode for the elections. We don't want partisan politics to contaminate that process and that is why some people are starting to say well there are no many unanswered questions that probably we may not be ready for April 10th."

"Guatemala changed their date I think on 3 occasions. In October of 2013, they were to have their referendum and they changed the date. So why can't we change the date? If this is something that is so important and that we could only have one shot at it and we see that we are not ready for April 10th, 2019, then the government has the responsibility to tell the OAS, to tell the Friends of Belize and to informed Guatemala that we are going to change the date, because we are not ready. There is nothing in place to be able to encourage the political parties to take out the votes. There is an election coming up. We don't have money, so if we have to choose about taking out our voters on election day or ICJ - that's a tough one."

Reporter
"So you would advocate for the date to be pushed back?"

Hon. John Briceno, Leader of the Opposition
"Because of all of these questions that I brought up, unless if the government can now convinced me that they have all of this in place, then we should seriously consider whether we should change the date or not."

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