We won't know until Wednesday - two days from now - whether the Chief Justice says "Go" or "No" to the April 10th referendum. That's what came out of court late this evening after a quite dramatic day.
The drama came from the hundreds of protestors the PUP had outside, making the CJ know that they wanted him to grant an injunction, putting a hold on the referendum.
And in the court, there was also some measure of drama. the CJ's courtroom was near standing room only for the hearing of the injunction in the ICJ referendum case.
Attorney for the government side, Lisa Shoman spoke to the press when it was done to give us a recap:
Lisa Shoman, Government attorney
"Well what we said basically is at this stage the court isn't being asked to decide the claim. The court is actually being asked to look at whether the referendum to be held on April 10th should be stopped. So in doing that the court has to look at 3 things: it has to look at whether there is a serious issue to be tried by the court; it has to look at whether there is irreparable harm that will be caused by the claimants, if they don't get what they are asking for and it has to actually look at which of the parties would suffer greater harm if the relief that they are asking for is or isn't granted. Remember in this case what they are asking for is that the court stop the referendum from being held and there is only one referendum which is being held, that is the one of April 10th, 2019 and so we have made strong arguments to the court on all of these headings. We feel very comfortable with the arguments made and it is now up to the court as to what they will decide. As you know that decision will be handed down on April 3rd. The argument about jurisdiction of the court is being made because what we are actually saying is that when it comes to the issue of whether a treaty is lawful, legal, constitutional, unconstitutional - that is not the remit of this court, that the treaty is fact has been entered into, has been ratified ad that at this point our argument is that there is nothing more for the court to do in respect of the treaty and so that entire argument as to whether it's unconstitutional or not is not for this forum and until there is something that the court can rule on if we get to the ICJ, because remember we haven't had the referendum. So I like to refer to this and I am sorry I am going to be a little bit flippant, this is to me a perhaps tacos, with some maybe sprinkled inside and a serving of if in addition thereto. It's an if tortilla rolling up some maybe and perhaps tacos. This is really very far to ask the court to stretch."
Attorney for the PUP parliamentarians who brought the action - Eamon Courtenay declined comment this evening.
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