So now with the SI revoked, it makes another PUP Trip to the Sarstoon a little less meaningful by way of political standards. The main reason for the PUP’s visit to the Sarstoon was to challenge the - what they called- unconstitutional move by the Government. So no SI, no political meaning. But is the same true for the Constitutional Challenge which the opposition filed against the Government? Today we asked Eamon Courtney for his legal opinion on this matter. Here is what he said.
Eamon Courtenay - Representative of the Leader of the Opposition
"It's not mute and it is not pointless because we expect the challenge to continue. You see what you have there is in our view an unlawful exercise of state power. As I said before it is bad policy and it is bad in law. The public safety act has a specific criteria for the Governer General to exercise that power to restrain people from moving in the Sarstoon or anywhere else. We believe that the facts were not there for him to do it and therefore he acted unlawfully and we have to set a precedent, the court has to speak to the circumstances in which that kind of power can be exercised in the future. So it is a very important case, it violated our constitutional rights and the constitutional rights of many Belizeans who attempted to go there and we ask the court to still pronounce on it for the future."
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