And while Bradley was busy in court today, yesterday you heard him emphasize the importance of informing the public about the work of the People's Constitution Committee. As we told you yesterday, it is made up of 23 commissioners who are responsible for the overhaul of Belize's constitution.
And today, they launched their public education campaign. The chairman, Anthony Chanona, says he has great expectations that this exercise will allow Belizeans, especially the younger ones, to learn more about the constitution and to become more engaged in the consultation process. He also explained their plans for going into the schools across the country.
Anthony Chanona, Chair, People's Constitution Commission
"The expectations is that the tools that we launched today, Thanks to Professor Destro, Dickey Bradley will play an important part in the way going forward. So we have high expectations that we are going to tear down this barrier of having no knowledge of our constitution."
"As was reported we launched on 14th November in Belmopan and then we began working going forward. You know I say 7 months, because if you look at Christmas and Easter holidays, we're a country of holidays - we lost some time, but we kept the team together which was my main job, familiarization of each other trying to manage the dynamics that sit around the table and not having had once to put a matter to a vote. We've always been able to arrive to a consensus in the decision making."
"I believe we are now at the point to begin to engage the people. And as I said earlier, the voice of the people is the voice of God; Philip Goldson reminded us of that. And so, I believe that when we start taking to the people, especially the young people, I have great expectation. Because we are going to interface with the Ministry of Education and have access to all that database, when these young people start to wrap their minds around apps, debates, essays, poster competitions, logo competitions, you're going to see the energy released from sixty-two percent of our population twenty-five years and younger."
"Each zone, with the template we're developing in the northern zone, we have all that structure in place. Those zones are going to develop their own. We have one set of citizen survey questions. That will be common across the zones. We have to have consistency in the messaging otherwise we will create some chaos and confusion. So we are going to standardize the messaging and these zones are going to, the Statistical Institute of Belize will train them and we will onboard them with all the resources and then they use the culture of their zones."
"For example, I understand that in Corozal they have special cultural event they called Art in the Park. So, they know the culture, they know the people better than the secretariat does. So we're onboarding them with the resources they will develop with the assistance of the persons that are assigned to these zones to develop these activities."
And at today's launch, 3 MOU's were signed with the Ministry of Education, SIB, and the diaspora. Chanona told us about the importance of these collaborations.
Anthony Chanona, Chair, People's Constitution Commission
"The statute mandate that we have instructs that the final report must have taken into consideration people living abroad, the diaspora. And has develop a masterpiece of data collection and information. By signing this agreement we're not only tapping into that database and that knowledge, but it gives is coverage into several areas beyond the United States of America including Europe, Latin America, South America - it's a tremendous opportunity. We signed on to that. It also gives us the authenticity of tapping into the database for the Statistical Institute of Belize and also with the ministry of education. The ministry has a database of over 6,000 teachers that have to develop these curriculum. So by declaring September constitution month, we get to feed into our programs and these activities and then go into the school system. If you look at it, Belize has 100,000 children in high school. If each household has 2 and chances are there is more, might be 3-4 and each school has a project to take in this citizen survey, we expect to get 200,000 or 300,000 responses from that initiative. So I can't underscore just how important it is to have signed these memorandum of understanding and then for the Reporter Press to offer us a free page."
