"Bruk down di wall" - that's what the slogan that's plastered all across the city says. And if you don't know which wall - it's actually the walls that separate the Fort Street Tourism Village, the Brown Sugar Marketplace and the Harbour View Restaurant and Michael Colin Gallery. Those walls keep the cruise visitors inside the village and prevent them from walking freely over to the Harbour View on one side and the Brown Sugar Marketplace on the other.
It's been a long battle by the Harbour View owners to bring the wall down and now they are joined by the multi-million dollar Brown Sugar development. Today the case went to court where five groups were represented by six attorneys. They are: Harbour View, Brown Sugar, the Belize City Council, the Port Authority and the Belize Tourism Board.
Fred Lumor represents Harbor View and he used the day to present an exhaustive case against the wall. He finished just before 6:00 and he told us the wall is a discrimination against his client.
Fred Lumor, Attorney for Harbor View
"Our argument today is that the regulatory authorities of the Village, having been designated as an official point of entry, have treated the Wet Lizard and the Village differently from the way they have treated Eurocaribe and Brown Sugar people, meaning that they have allowed Wet Lizard and the Tourism Village to have direct access to what we call the cruise ship market on the boardwalk along the shoreline whilst they tell my client that they should go to Fort Street and try to solicit at the market from the cruise ship passengers in that area."
Jules Vasquez,
So really it is the fault of the regulator?
Fred Lumor,
"Yes the fault of the regulator, that is the Port Authority, especially."
Jules Vasquez,
So it is not so much the intransigence of the Fort Street Tourism Village.
Fred Lumor,
"Yes the Fort Street Tourism Village is subject to be regulated."
Jules Vasquez,
I spoke to the attorney for Fort Street earlier, Dean Barrow, and he said it is not a matter of life and death, no one will die.
Fred Lumor,
"I don't think that it is life and death but it is a lot of money. We are talking about millions of money (dollars)."
Jules Vasquez,
But Sir, they had an exclusive license for duty free, the Fort Street Tourism Village, and your client and the Brown Sugar Marketplace are the ones impinging on that exclusive license and that is why the fence becomes such a consequence because you all, the attorney for Fort Street will argue, got a license that you ought not to have gotten.
Fred Lumor,
"Is the answer that the government can just decide that there is a cruise ship market coming in or give access to one individual in this country to have access to it and others won't have it? This is the real constitutional issue that we are fighting in court here."
Jules Vasquez,
So the government erred from the outset.
Fred Lumor,
"Absolutely, they goofed and the consequences are coming to haunt them."
Tomorrow, Dean Barrow will present the case for the Fort Street Tourism Village. This afternoon he gave us an idea of what his argument will be.
Dean Barrow, Attorney for Fort Street Tourism Village
"It defeats me how a constitutional claim can be brought against a private entity such as the Fort Street Tourism Village when the law is quite clear:
constitutional redress is only available against organs of the state or organs that are public authorities. I therefore feel that certainly with respect to my client, this whole action is misconceived, that it is a non-starter.
This whole dispute can be, to some extent, be laid squarely at the door of government. Government gave the Fort Street Tourism Village a contractual assurance of exclusivity in so far as duty free retail operations for cruise ship passengers was concerned. Along comes Brown Sugar, and we know who the principals are in Brown Sugar. Along comes the Michael Colin Gallery and they go and get duty free status, clearly in violation of the contractual arrangements that the village had with government. They are saying that we are unfairly restricting competition but it is a competition they should have never been allowed to enter into because they knew at the time they did this that we had a monopoly, we had an exclusive arrangement.
It is essentially a commercial dispute and so there's money to be made, there's money to be lost but in my view, that really is the sum of what's involved. It is as important as that and it is as trivial as that depending on your point of view."
And if you're wondering, yes, Barrow did say a few weeks ago that he was leaving his law practice but explained that he would finish up matters that he had already started including this case which goes back to last year.
