By Dylan Vernon, TIME COME #20, 10 February 2025.

The Belize PEACE Movement (BPM) has been on target with its sustained education and advocacy on the re-districting issue. This is why I have not addressed it, except secondarily, in TIME COME so far: the BMP, Vision Inspired by the People, and others like Jeremy Enriquez, ‘got this’. So, this article is primarily to applaud the BPM on its tenacious re-districting campaign to highlight the constitutional failure of both major political parties to make re-districting happen. The BPM’s work paved the way last week for three citizens to take up the baton and push this matter to another legal level. But, apart from summarising the salient developments, I will discuss the re-districting problem in wider perspective as it relates to systemic causes and to considerations implied for constitutional reform.

The Equal Numbers Principle

International best practice does demonstrate that electoral democracy is most fair and participatory when there are as equal numbers of persons as possible in electoral constituencies that elect representatives to the same legislative body. As the BPM points out, international best practice for maximum variance among constituencies is between 10% to 15%. Look at this this way. If Division A has 1000 electors and Division B has 200, then those in Division A will technically (other things being equal) have five times less access to representation than those in Division B.

From another angle, if the boundaries of Division A were to be re-drawn so that other divisions get some of their electors, these electors will, technically, have more access to representation. Or if Division A were to be divided into say three divisions, there would be two additional constituencies, each with its own representative. Even if some may want to argue on principles, the fact is that the Constitution of Belize has embraced the ‘equal numbers’ principle – and the Constitution is Supreme Law.

Ignoring the Constitution

The Constitution of Belize mandates that ‘from time to time’ the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC), based on population changes in Belize, shall make proposals to the National Assembly for dividing or adjusting the electoral divisions so that “each electoral division shall have as nearly as may be an equal number of persons eligible to vote”, as long as the number of divisions does not go under 28 (Section 90.1-4).  The last re-districting was in 2005, under the Said Musa government, when the number of divisions increased from 29 to 31.  It was not very substantive re-districting and left unresolved discrepancies that have worsened since then.

In the past 20 years, governments of both major political parties, including the current, have neglected to act on the re-districting constitutional mandate. Yet, the factors, both constitutional and technical, that demand it are indisputable. Since 2005, there have been two population censuses that document population increases as well as different rates of population growth across the geographical areas that include the 31 constituencies. Additionally, the annual voter data from the EBC itself show that the discrepancies in the numbers of electors across most constituencies have expanded disproportionately.

If we use the indicator of registered voters, there were 204,378 in January 2025 or an average of 6,593 per constituency (EBC). Due to factors such as geography, it’s impossible to have that exact number in each constituency. Yet we have a situation, for example, where the three constituencies of Stann Creek West, Belmopan and Belize Rural South currently have an average of 10,376 registered voters, while the constituencies of Mesopotamia, Fort George and Queen’s Square have an average of only 2,548 – a difference of 7,828 or 75%.

Other things being equal, the constituents in the smaller constituencies will have ‘more’ access to representation than those in the three larger constituencies. For sure, the representative of, say, Stann Creek West will need to expend more time and resources to give his/her constituents the same level of attention and representation as, say, Mesopotamia. It goes without saying that illegal vote-buying is, generally, more expensive when there are many more constituents to induce.

As I noted in a recent post, Dr. Philip Castillo is likely correct in arguing that re-districting would also de-incentivise illicit voter transfers. This is because most transfers are from divisions with large numbers of voters to those with much fewer.

UDP Failed to Act Before 2020

The numerical discrepancy of registered voters across constituencies is not new. By the time the United Democratic Party (UDP) won its second consecutive election in 2012, some seven years after the 2005 re-districting, some discrepancies were already obvious. By the 2015 election they were blatant and, in the lead up to the 2020 election, they were indisputable. However, the EBC under the UDP failed to fulfil its constitutional duty to re-district. One of the UDP’s excuses during this period was that it needed to do voter re-registration first. However, while re-registration did (finally) happen in 2018, re-districting did not follow during the UDP term.

That’s when the BPM upped its game. After its public advocacy failed to get a positive response from the UDP government in 2019, members of the BPM initiated a constitutional judicial review claim against the EBC and the Attorney General in an attempt to get the Court to order that re-districting must happen before the next election (then due by November 2020). The case dragged on into 2020 and was still on-going when, on 5 October 2020, prime minister Dean Barrow announced elections for 11 November 2020. The BPM immediately sought an injunction to stay the 2020 November elections until after re-districting had taken place. The UDP government disagreed and lawyered up ‘bigly’.

As you may recall, the People’s United Party (PUP) also filed an application to the Court in October 2020 against staying the election, in effect, agreeing with the position of the UDP government that the election process was already underway and could not be stopped. In mid-October 2020, the Court agreed with this position and turned down the BPM application. But the BPM did not stop there.

No Re-districting Yet under PUP

While opposing the postponement of elections in 2020, the Opposition PUP had stated during its campaign that it planned to conduct a re-districting exercise within its first year if it won. This did not happen. After months of public and legal pressure from the BPM, the EBC announced in February 2022 that a Task Force on Re-districting was being established. Not satisfied with the level of transparency of the Task Force process, the BPM scored a major victory on 11 November 2022 when the Court granted a consent order. In short, the EBC was to undertake a process of research with the objective of presenting re-districting proposals to the National Assembly by July 2023. Since the consent order, the key developments up to December 2024 include:

• June 2023, Task Force Report sent by EBC to the National Assembly. BPM and others pointed out problems with the Report, including the variance among some of the proposed new divisions being above 25%. Elements of both major political parties are also critical of specific proposals.
• May 2024, The BPM made application to the High Court to stay the next election based on the consent order not being adhered to and the Report not being fit for purpose. The High Court did not agree, and the application was dismissed
• May 2024, During the court case, and almost one year after the release of the Report, the proposal for re-districting was finally presented to the House as an amendment Bill and went through its first reading in the House. There it has remained stagnant to today.
• December 2024, The BPM made yet another application to the Court to stay the 2025 election on the basis that the 2022 consent order had not been followed and that the electoral districts, without re-districting, are unconstitutional. This particular case was pushed into 2025 and is on-going.

Where We Are Now?

This brings us to last week when, on 4 February 2025, three citizens, including Jeremy Enriquez, gave notice of proposed action to bring a new constitutional case to stay the election until after a re-districting exercise.  If brought, the case would have at least two new legal dimensions. First, the claimants would seek to get the High Court to deem the 2025 election invalid if re-districting is not done before.

Second, the potential claimants demand to be informed if the government intends to call the election without the re-districting exercise being held. The latter, of course, is an attempt to avoid the precedent set in October 2020 when the Court ruled that the election had already been called and could not be halted. Also new is that the claimants have engaged the services of a highly regarded Senior Counsel and former Attorney General of Trinidad & Tobago, Anand Ramlogan.

Based on the publicly available legal correspondence between Ramlogan and Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay (retained by the Office of the Attorney General), the government is taking the move by Jeremy Enriquez et al to seek constitutional redress seriously. Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith has been retained to represent the EBC — as is the situation with the current BPM case. Indeed, the use of Courtenay and Smith (both would likely be on most people’s list of Belize’s top three lawyers) indicates the level of interest of government on the matter. But this is not new – since 2019 governments have employed the best and most expensive legal minds at taxpayers’ expense with the objective of postponing re-districting.

What is clear is that this entire expensive constitutional mess – again at time when the nation is waiting on an electoral watch cliff edge – was totally avoidable. So why are we in this mess?

Political Parties and Di System

Over time, and especially when in opposition, both major political parties since 2020 have agreed, at least in rhetoric, that re-districting is needed. That is certainly the case today. So why haven’t they acted? We all know why. Political parties are all about winning elections. When in power, both major political parties instinctively postpone re-districting because they won the last election on the status quo. They don’t want to overturn the papaya cart. Powerful representatives from small constituencies that have to be enlarged will oppose having their divisions erased or having to compete with a party colleague in a merged division. Others will oppose where lines are drawn, and all will seek to influence boundary decisions. Gerrymandering will always be attempted.

But that’s all totally expected with partisan politics. It’s what political parties and politicians do. This is why there is a constitutional mandate to force re-districting to happen – to override partisan instincts.  This is why when the Constitution is violated citizens have the right to take court action to pressure governments to act constitutionally. That is all that the BPM has done and that is all that Jeremy Enriquez et al are doing with their proposed claim.

The reasons that both UDP and PUP governments have been able to ignore re-districting go beyond hiring the best lawyers. At the core, it is a systemic problem that is not unlike the causes of the audit problem I addressed in a past TIME COME piece. Let me point to just three aspects of this.

At the core, our political system allows for the winning party to have so much power that oversight of the Legislature over the Executive is blurred and often non-existent. When almost every elected representative in the House of Representatives ends up in the Executive as ministers and minsters of state, the House has no incentive to pressure and monitor the executive organs to carry out such constitutionally required mandates as delivering audits annually and re-districting ‘from time to time.’ That’s because they are only putting pressure on themselves (the very same people) in a futile circular game.

Another aspect of the systems problem is that the Elections and Boundaries Commission, which is charged with the constitutional responsibility to advise the National Assembly on re-districting is fatally flawed by design. It is the winning political party that, in effect, constitutionally appoints a majority of three of the five members of the EBC and can control its decisions. The opposition party in the House (if there is one) appoints two members, meaning that all five EBC members are partisan appointees. In short, the EBC can kick the re-districting can down the road when so ‘instructed’ by the powers that be in the governing party – and the opposition may support them at times.

Furthermore, the political system does not provide for fixed election dates, giving prime ministers great leeway in calling an election at any time. This not only makes it difficult to effectively plan the timing of re-districting but also provides prime ministers with the power to pre-emptively avoid them, when inconvenient, by calling elections.

Constitutional Reform: Section 90 and Beyond 

Belize’s post-independence experience with Section 90 illustrates that these constitutional provisions on re-districting are much too broad and blunt, giving clever lawyers too much wiggle room for legal and judicial mischief. I will end with pointing out some of these and proposing reform options:

• Time frame: “from time to time” is at the discretion of the EBC and can be two years or twenty years or more. Clearly there must be a period set, such as every ten years, or a trigger related to the extent of variance among consistencies.
• Variance Guidance and other Criteria: The guidance “as nearly as may be an equal number of persons…” has proven to be too general. The Constitution should provide a range of acceptable variance, and the 10% to 15% BPM suggestion seems rational. Additionally, more guidance criteria could be provided to the EBC at Section 90.2 to guide its deliberations on re-districting.
• Eligibility: Section 90 prescribes that the population indicator shall be “persons eligible to vote”. This is open to interpretation. Generally, ‘everyone’ assumes this means ‘registered voters’. However, it could also refer to the entire population per constituency who are over 18 years of age and meet other voting requirements. Clearly, this latter population is larger than the number of registered voters. In re-districting, numbers are important and a definition of “persons eligible to vote” should be provided in the Section or a term used that leaves nothing to interpretation or legal challenge.
• Oversight: There is nothing in Section 90 that speaks to what happens if the EBC does not perform its functions in a timely manner. Consideration should be given to adding a sub-section that states that, if the EBC fails to perform its constitutional functions, then another constitutional body or person shall investigate and ensure that the EBC does. There is, for example, such a provision for the annual audit, where the Senate can investigate why there is no annual audit as constitutionally required. Sanctions can also be considered.
• Reform the EBC: Currently, the EBC has only members appointed by the two major political parties, with the governing party having the majority and deciding vote. This party will also have the majority in the House. In short, the Constitution, in effect, gives political parties the power to do one of the constitutional duties that is most fraught with partisan interests: re-districting. Loco! I have long called for reform of the EBC, in the interest of independence and impartiality, so that it has no political party appointees or, at least, so that they are not the majority.
• Have the Reformed EBC Take the Final Decisions: This is controversial I know. But if the EBC is really independent and impartial and without partisan majorities, why not have its reports on re-districting be the final word? Of course, the process will have to be laid out in law to ensure rigorous research and inclusive consultations. In the current system, where the EBC presents proposals to the House of Representatives for its consideration, much mischief and procrastination can happen – because the members of the House are politicians too. Witness the fate of the current re-districting Bill that was laid before the House in May last year – it has been frozen.

As I always state when I make reform proposals, these that relate to re-districting should ideally come as part of a wider constitutional reform package to ensure constitutional and institutional synergies.

What Happens Next?

As it relates to re-districting, the Jeremy Enriquez et al proposed claim again puts Belize in interesting constitutional waters as it pertains to powers of the executive, legislature and judiciary. In our Westminster parliamentary system, the parliament usually gets what it wants. We have to assume that the instruction given by the Attorney General and by the EBC to their legal counsels is, once again, to kick the re-districting can down the road and to ensure that the 2025 election happens early as planned. As such, the matter will likely end up in Court…again. And, yes, there will be more political promises.

I won’t attempt any legal prediction – not my expertise. What I do know is that both on principle and on the Constitution, the BPM and Jeremy Enriquez et al are right! And these advocates did not begin their campaign last week. It has been over five years. There are really no acceptable excuses. It should concern all of us that the two major political parties have put us in this avoidable and expensive political and legal mess once again – part of which is that there is a re-districting Bill before the House that everyone says is flawed. It begs the question as to whether this was the government’s end game all along. And who in the Opposition UDP would support re-districting before the election?

A few citizens are understandably questioning whether they should vote at all if re-districting is kicked down the road again. It’s easy to say that re-districting won’t change much, won’t change the price of bread and tortillas and won’t change the outcome of the next elections. And the government knows that, right now, the election itself is what the vast majority of people are focusing on. But using these arguments to justify on-going skewed representation and constitutional abuse is a slippery slope to more authoritarianism.

As part of wider constitutional reform, we must use this frustrating experience to guide the creation and acceptance of crystal-clear provisions that de-politicize what should be a straightforward technical process of re-districting.  In the meantime, we should applaud and support those who have kept the re-districting issue on the front burner and who demonstrate that we can seek to use our people power to advocate for the enforcement of citizen rights and for fighting constitutional abuse. There are times when we are unable to stop such abuse but we should never fail to protest.

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