Monday, May 29, 2023

When Belize got its Independence on September 21, 1981, we may not have fully grasped the pressure under which our first prime minister, George Cadle Price, was operating. Yes, in his quest for the “holy grail” of independence, he had seemed to go along with the infamous Heads of Agreement, until the Belizean people rose up in numbers and it required a State of Emergency to stop the demonstrations and riots that engulfed the streets of Belize City, while the United Nations and our colonial bosses in Great Britain had already agreed on the culmination of the process of “decolonization”. With the people’s boldness and grit in the international spotlight, independence could not be stopped, while the Heads of Agreement was pushed away to the backburner, to raise its ugly head piecemeal over the years and decades to come.

But what the Belizean people did not know was that, along with the British commitment to the U.N. to keep some defensive forces in Belize “for an appropriate period” in the face of a belligerent Guatemala, our prime minister had, just a few months after independence, signed a treaty with the former colonial master: the U.K. – Belize Investment Treaty of April 27, 1982. And it is this treaty that one Lord Michael Ashcroft has used as a legal club to beat down any effort by Belize governments to put obstacles in the way of his aggressive corporate ambitions in Belize.

We have seen how difficult it is to convict a person with immense wealth and power even in the mighty USA. It takes time and a lot of money from the prosecution end to attain justice against the big corporate players. In tiny developing states like Belize, jail is mostly for the poor and the unconnected. For the “rich and famous’, litigation is the shield that buys time, with appeal after appeal after appeal, to a higher and a higher court, utilizing every flimsy thread of technicality to stall the system, until a loophole is found, a dead witness, or a missing/disappeared piece of evidence, or some change in the laws or the judges and their interpretation of the law, all with the hope of escaping justice. In the case of Trump, it is the wealth and power of the very state that he has challenged, and it is left to be seen where that will eventually lead.

There is a stark difference, however, when comparing the relative wealth of Trump to that of the US state legal apparatus, and the personal wealth of Lord Michael Ashcroft to that of the little nation state of Belize.

In little Belize, a ruthless and cunning billionaire is absolutely a “bull in a china shop.” Ashcroft has had his way with governments blue and red. Always, the people of Belize lose. The courts of Belize are like his playground, because his wealth can purchase the services of the highest caliber international lawyers, while also enabling him to cherry pick amongst the local legal minds he can utilize in pursuit of his corporate goals. Even when he seems to lose, as in finally seeing ownership of BTL wrenched from his hands, he still wins, because the Belizean people were made to pay a scandalous amount for a company that our own resources had built.

The ace in the hole, whenever his legal machinations have seemed to run up against an obstacle, has always been the BIT investment treaty, a treaty apparently specifically designed to facilitate a sort of neo-colonization of Belize. This treaty was a secret from the Belizean people for decades; not until it was employed by Ashcroft in his litigation against the Belize government sometime in the 1990s, were the Belizean people even made aware of its existence.

The treatment meted out to Belizean stevedores and their union by the Port of Belize Limited, after more than ten years under receivership by Ashcroft’s Belize Bank, exposes the entitlement and disdain for our government and people that Mr. Ashcroft feels due to the legal weapon he possesses with the BIT treaty. It is as if he feels he can do as he pleases. How else can we explain his utter disregard for the ruling of the Essential Services Arbitration Tribunal, which is a legal entity under our laws with authority to make a final resolution of the dispute between the Christian Workers Union and Ashcroft’s Port of Belize?

It was the same attitude expressed by Ashcroft when his Waterloo cruise tourism project was stalled by a decision of another government entity, the Department of the Environment. His agent had the audacity to publicly claim that members of the DOE had asked them for bribes to gain the DOE’s favor in its ruling on their EIA proposal. Despite the odious nature of that insinuation, the Ashcroft people never brought forward any evidence, and neither were they sued for that terrible allegation. But, taking any Ashcroft entity to court is not a pleasant prospect for anyone in Belize, including government. His pockets are deep, and whoever goes into “deep water” against him in court, will have a hard time sustaining their position over time, which his money can always buy, through frivolous and complicated legal gymnastics.

Now, here we have another big player, Port of Magical Belize, and a shameful document purporting to bestow upon them every legal advantage possibly imaginable from our government in going forward with their cruise tourism plans. Its mysterious affiliate company, Portico Enterprise Limited, appears to be an on-again, off-again registered company in different jurisdictions. We need some expert assistance to get a full picture on them; but, all the more reason to be extra careful.

Now, it is Ashcroft who is crying foul. What a convoluted mess!

The U.K.-Belize 1982 BIT investment treaty is all about protecting the business investments of British nationals in Belize, and our Belize government should move post-haste to revisit it. So far, all the benefits have been for the British billionaire, and little for Belize. All businesses are already protected under our laws; the mountain of legal mumbo-jumbo that comes along with this BIT treaty is all geared to provide a feeding ground of nit-picking and legal gamesmanship by the party with the best lawyers and the deepest pocket to stay in the game.

A slogan at our independence in 1981 was, “Independence today; liberation tomorrow.” It is time for our liberation from the shackles of the BIT treaty, and perhaps it is a fitting task for the party of Independence. In the meantime, any Belize government may be advised to steer as far as possible from litigation with these corporate giants.