This morning, the Caribbean Court of Justice held a hearing via teleconference with the Government of Belize, the Ashcroft Alliance and Fortis International. They had convened to discuss the widely publicized settlements that the Barrow Administration had arrived at with the former owners over the nationalizations of BEL and BTL.
But, they had to grant an audience to Senior Counsel Magali Marin-Young, who was representing the Bar Association of Belize. As has been widely reported, two weeks ago, the members of the Bar, by majority vote, passed a resolution to apply to the CCJ. They wanted to urge the Court to still give a decision on the legality of the 8th Amendment to the constitution, despite the settlement that has been hammered out.
The sitting justices, including President Justice Dennis Byron, granted Marin-Young an audience and she tried to convince them to deny a stay of the Appeal Case. That would have been the first step in getting the Court to deliver a judgment despite the settlement, but, the CCJ decided that they could not entertain this application. Therefore, it was dismissed.
It was probably for the first time that the Ashcroft Alliance took the same side as the Barrow administration in court. So, right after the hearing, we asked both sides to discuss the outcome. Here's what they had to say:
Denys Barrow, SC - Attorney For the Government
"It's not something I say very easily or readily, but the bar really was misguided. They allowed themselves to be led by a political motivation in making this application. Had they thought about it properly, had they distance themselves from the politics which drove them, they would not have made this application. You saw what took place. The court gave them an opportunity to persuade the court why we should not refused your application. Gave them very short shrift, then even called upon any of the other lawyers to say anything - just said you have basically wasted your time."
Eamon Courtenay, SC - Attorney
"The difficulty with the Bar Association's application, aside from it being solely as the court rightly pointed out, the difficulty with it is that this is an appeal between the government and the respective parties and those parties have settled their differences. Now the Bar wants to come into the court and in fact the application was to opposed the granting of the stay that the court ordered and its rather difficult to comprehend where the two parties have settle their differences for a third party to come in and say I want you to stop that and not grant them a stay. The Bar also wanted the court to hand down decision on the public law issues. By that they mean the amendments to section 2, section 69 and the addition of power 13 of the constitution. Once the parties has settle their differences, that became academic. The difficulty why we had to opposed it was that if the court were to hand down a decision even though it is academic, it would be on the record and people would jump on it and use it to say oh the settlement can be undermined because the court has said this and the court had said that and so the finality that we had hoped for and the finality that we achieve would not have been achieved and the prejudice to the settlement was likely and therefore for those reasons we certainly had to opposed it."
"I think every Belizean, everybody in the commonwealth would want the court to make a decision and for us to hear what the result of the arguments were. But the courts are not universities. They don't sit around writing judgements and using their time and resources in order to educate and teach people. They settle live disputes and once the parties settle this, there was no live dispute between us and therefore the court had nothing to do. It became academic. It is not a good use of the court's time and resources to write a judgement after the parties have settled."
This evening, the Bar Association released a statement saying, quote,
The Association categorically denies all allegations that the application to intervene was made for political reasons. The purpose of the application was to seek permission to ask the Court to still deliver its decision on the Belize Constitution (Eighth) Amendment Act.
So, after that application was tabled and refused, the CCJ then moved on to the real business of the day. The litigants were applying to the court to enforce the consent order which spelled out the terms of the settlement between the Government and the former owners of BTL and BEL. We asked both sides to explain the importance of formalizing the settlement:
Denys Barrow, SC - Attorney For the Government
"The substantive motions what we came here for, what this hearing was all about, was to have the consent orders entered into. As you know there has been a full settlement by the government and the appellants and the object of today's hearing was to have some orders which were agreed upon between the government and the appellants confirmed and made as orders of the court."
Eamon Courtenay, SC - Attorney
"We applied to the court for what was called a Tomlin order, which is to stay the appeals so that the party settlement can take effect. The appeal remains before the court, but the parties are implementing the settlement agreements which have all been made public and they only remain before the court in the event that there is a term that is not complied with we can go back to the court and ask the court to enforce that term. Our expectation is that as the government as complied with virtually all the terms of the agreements that the few that are remaining they will comply with them and therefore there will be no need for us to come back to the court."
Since 2009, the Ashcroft Alliance has emerged as the Government's toughest legal opponent suing them in courts all over the world. It has been a marathon legal battle for both sides. So, we wondered, with this settlement, is it over? Here's what both sides had to say:
Denys Barrow, SC - Attorney For the Government
"There are some other matters outstanding. There was decision in the Supreme Court I think in January or February of this year to enforce an arbitration award. That is still outstanding and I think there might be one or two other things arising out of settlement deeds etc. not related to the nationalization which remained for determination or for hearing on appeal."
Eamon Courtenay, SC - Attorney
"There are a few outstanding cases matters that need to be resolved immediately. The UHS arbitration comes to mind. So there are a few matters that remained outstanding. But by and large I would say 90% of the litigation should be at an end."
The CCJ commended all the parties for arriving at this settlement.
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