7 News Belize

PM Says It’s Not The Judgement, It’s The Treatment
posted (February 21, 2019)
And, speaking to the press after the Business Forum, the Prime Minister elaborated on his issues with Justice Abel and government's complaint to the CJ:

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"This was despite the Belize Bank's stock offset which deprive the treasury of approximately 14.1 million dollars. I thought carefully about this and I must say the judicial decision that enabled this is absolutely going to the challenged, especially since it came in circumstances where the bench appeared not just heedless of, but downright rude to the crown and its law officers. I don't want to do a reprise of the last prime minister of Barbados Freundel Stuart, who described the judges of the CCJ as politicians in Robes. Well we see what happened to Freundel, so I am not going to say anything like that. I stick absolutely faithfully to the requirement that we never questioned judicial integrity. But justice is not a cloistered virtue and when there is what appears to be unremitting judicial hostility, when this goes beyond mere impatient descends into downright incivility. Absolutely upsetting the equilibrium of especially young crown counsel and lawyers who spend a world of time preparing their argument, only to be dismissed in the most slighting manner. I will use my bully-pulpit to speak out against that. I will tell you I'm not just doing it today. We have officially made a complaint about that sort of behaviour."

In his remarks to the press, The Prime Minister also quoted a statistic, saying, quote, "perhaps 95%, maybe even 99% of the government cases before that particular judge result in a loss for the government." End quote.

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