There will be no referendum on April 10. It has been postponed 6 to 8 weeks. Government was forced to do this after they were turned down today by the court of appeal - which refused to hear an appeal of the Chief Justice's decision without the required 21 days' notice.
We'll tell you all about that in a few minutes, but first to the Prime Minister who made the official announcement today that they will have to wheel and come again:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"In consequence of what happened today we will be having a referendum on Wednesday April 10th. I am in no doubt that we will be having a referendum on going to the ICJ no later 6-8 weeks from the originally scheduled date."
"Where do we go from here? We must look at whether in fact we can get before the CCJ quickly for the hearing of the appeal which the court of appeal could not hear. In other words, we must at least examine the possibility of having the highest court of our country look at the chief justice's decision."
"We therefore will huddle with council little later this evening. to see if we can go get before the CCJ to in fact have a hearing of the substantive appeal against the chief justice's injunction. Now, some of you may ask and I know a lot of people were in fact asking why don't you just go to the house and pass a law to fix what we might describe as the possible mischief that the chief justice flagged in coming to his decision to issue the injunction. Is it just that the government and the Prime Minister are stubborn and arrogant? - go to the house - go to parliament."
"Well the short answer to that is that even if we were to 'fix' that law, which we will in any event ultimately do, that does not lift the injunction. The Chief Justice, and I also think that his is one of his errors, described his order in the widest possible terms. He said that all of us and in particular the Chief Elections Officer, all of us restrained from holding from the injunction until after he would have tried the entire case. A number of things about that. With no disrespect to the Chief Justice, he's not exactly known for a timely fast hearings and quick delivery of decisions. So if we were to simply rest content with that order as it is currently framed, there is no telling when on earth we would ever be able to have the referendum. And I repeat, this Government is determined and will absolutely find a way to have that injunction held within the next one to two months. We will not allow the Belizean people to be deprived of their fundamental right to decide on this issue."
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