_{Photo: Anthony “Boots” Martinez, former Port Loyola area rep}

by Kristen Ku

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Apr. 18, 2024

A deadline has been set, and Anthony “Boots” Martinez, former area representative for the Port Loyola constituency, is preparing to take legal action based on the response of the Elections and Boundaries Department, or lack thereof, to his efforts to trigger a recall process for the current area representative, Gilroy Usher, Sr.—a process he’s been involved in since July 2023.

After submitting a petition containing 1,654 signatures of constituency residents who are purportedly in support of the recall process to the Governor General earlier this year, on March 21, Martinez was informed that his petition had failed due to some signatures not matching those on record, as well as other individuals not being registered voters.

Approximately 265 of the signatures were rejected, which meant that the requirement that the petition be signed by at least 30% of voters in the constituency to enable the recall to take place had not been met (since only 1389 signatures were accepted as valid). Reportedly, 188 of those rejected signatures did not match the Elections and Boundaries’ record of registered electors.

“I was very offended, because in my humble opinion, Elections and Boundaries and the Chief Elections Officer, Ms. Tamai, in my view made a gross error by not verifying the signatures … The Elections and Boundaries Department has the resources, human and otherwise, to verify simple things,” Martinez commented in his press conference on Wednesday.

However, it was clearly not over for him, who over the past 2 weeks has re-visited 118 of the 188 rejected petitioners, along with a Justice of the Peace, to get those voters to sign a new declaration form, confirming that they were actually registered voters of Port Loyola.

“I revisited, along with the Justice of the Peace, various of them to present my copy of the petition, attached to the affidavit, affirming, ‘Do you recognize this signature? Yes sir.’ ‘Did you sign? Yes sir.’ ‘I would like you to read the declaration and sign that you did sign the petition,’ and that is what happened,” Martinez explained.

Martinez has sought legal counsel from attorneys Richard “Dickie” Bradley and Senior Counsel Dean Barrow, and on Monday, April 15, under the guidance of Bradley, he sent out a letter to the Chief Elections Officer, Josephine Tamai, in which he outlines what he says should have been done.

“Mr. Martinez submits that the Elections and Boundaries department should have done an exercise similar to the one undertaken by him over the past two weeks. By only comparing signatures, this has resulted in denying the disapproved petitioners as well as the over One Thousand Four Hundred and Eighty-Five voters of their democratic right to trigger a recall process,” the letter stated.

Enclosed with the letter were also the 118 signed declarations, which included both the names and addresses of the petitioners. These packages were also delivered to the Office of the Governor General and the Office of the Attorney General.

Martinez has given the Chief Elections Officer a week to respond. He has said that if she fails to do so, he will take the matter to the High Court.