A news analysis  
BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Dec. 13, 2018– The Government of Belize appears to lack the necessary political will to embrace its citizens living in the diaspora, because it has done nothing to involve them in the upcoming International Court of Justice referendum—the most important existential question facing post-independence Belize.

It is this same government led by Prime Minister Dean Barrow which passed an amendment to the Representation of the People’s Act, removing the high threshold for a referendum result to be valid and making the threshold a simple majority of the votes cast so that it becomes parallel to Guatemala’s referendum process.

In February 2013, Guatemala urged Belize to change its referendum law, because it said it did not want to waste 40 million dollars on a pointless referendum, Guatemala’s president at the time, Otto Molina Perez, told the Associated Press when he was on a visit to Spain.

Many thousands of Belizeans living in the diaspora became disenfranchised when the new re-registration exercise came into effect, bringing with it a provision in the law that requires that a person registering at a particular address must have lived continuously there for not less than two months.

What is needed is an amendment to the section of the Representation of the People’s Act of the Laws of Belize. The legislators on the government side of the House of Representatives know this, but have done nothing, even though they have the necessary majority to pass such an amendment to the law, or could do so by passing a Statutory Instrument.

The PUP Caribbean Shores area representative, Hon. Kareem Musa, is proposing exactly such an amendment in a Private Member’s Bill that he has delivered to the Clerk of the National Assembly this week. A Private Members Bill could be adopted by the side with the majority, and that would short-circuit the lengthy process that such a legislative initiative must undergo. So far, there have not been any takers from the government side of the House.

On Tuesday, Belize’s Attorney General, Michael Peyrefitte, in statements aired on 7News, made a remark which seemed to suggest that the Government of Belize is afraid of Guatemala’s objection, if such an effort were made by the Government of Belize to include the participation of Belizean citizens living in the diaspora in the ICJ referendum.

“You are talking about amending the Representation of the People’s Act, and you are talking about amending legislation that could affect our relationship with Guatemala. This is a Guatemala issue, because what I have read from what the member from Caribbean Shores has presented, is that he wants diaspora people to be able to be put on the list [voters list], but then when the date for the referendum has passed, then they be taken off the list,” AG Peyrefitte said.

In Musa’s Private Member’s Bill, the amendment would only allow for Belizeans living in the diaspora to vote in the ICJ referendum, and in no other election. In other words, their registration is a one-issue registration for voting in the ICJ referendum, and for nothing else.

Quite regrettably, Attorney General Peyrefitte was not pressed further on why he referred to the amending of the law so as to allow the participation of Belizeans living in the diaspora as being “a Guatemala issue” which “could affect our relations with Guatemala.”

How would that affect our relations with Guatemala? Isn’t our voters list strictly a Belizean matter, our internal affair?

The AG went on to say “obviously, these people don’t want to come to Belize, but how do you take your biometrics, how do you take your picture?”

Apart from the biometrics and logistical barriers that Peyrefitte referred to, he also added another obstacle to the process.

“What if I want to object to you being on the list? You would have to come down and present yourself to court, so I could object to you,” AG Peyrefitte said.

Peyrefitte added, “This is December; if you’re looking at April, it takes a while for a Private Member’s Bill to reach parliament, so I don’t know if he would have time. But it’s a matter for the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the House.”