During last night’s newscast, you heard Doug Singh, the Chairman of the Elections and Boundaries Commission, discussing the re-districting lawsuit that the Belize Peace Movement has brought against them.
The Peace Movement has brought a claim saying that the Commission has failed in its responsibility to carry out a redistricting exercise, which would ensure that the 31 electoral divisions countrywide are as equal in size as possible. Singh has made the point that the Commission wanted to do that redistricting right after the 2015 general elections, but there was a public push to clean up the voter’s list first.
The Chief Justice will decide if indeed the Commission “failed but during our sit-down interview with the Chairman, we discussed the disparity in the size of the constituencies, and the effect it has on the practice of democracy in Belize. Here’s how that conversation went:
Reporter
“Isn’t that disproportionate representation of the vote? “
Doug Singh - Chairman, E & B CommissionÂ
“That is correct. The claimants are not wrong. I’ll be honest with you. If you look at some of the positions that the claimants had made, I have to concede it. Are constituencies disproportionately aligned at this point? The answer is yes. It was aligned in 2015 when the commission made the decision to undertake a redivisioning. My difficulty with the petitioners is that they’re saying that we have failed to conduct this exercise and indeed we have. But we failed to conduct the exercise because when we tried to conduct the exercise it was an outcry by these very claimers, that said: no, do not do a redivisioning, do a reregistration first before you do a redivisioning. Does the disparity exist? Of course, it does. Has the commission failed to do its job, that is the question that the judge must determine. It’s not for an effort of the commission to not have to do its job, it was actually the resistance of the very complainers that prevented the commission from undertaking a redivisioning exercise in 2016. Â
Reporter
“So, then Sir, let’s say, for example, we are forced to maintain the status quo simply because of the logistics at this point? Â
Doug Singh
“At this point. Â
Reporter
“And the deadline of having this 2020 general election that must take place wouldn’t be perpetuating that same disproportionality of the votes and certain divisions carrying more weight? Â
Doug Singh
“But has it meaningfully affected our democracy? One of the arguments that are placed by the petitioners, is that their rights have been affected because they’re underrepresented. Meaning, that if one constituency only has 2000 registered voters and one has 8000, then 2000 people have one representative and 8000 people have one representative and that is unfair. They’re underrepresented, or another one is overrepresented. That has been the set of circumstances in this country for as far back as I remember. Because even last redivisioning exercise that was done in 2002, or 2003 I think it was, that saw the country getting two more seats, which is in Cayo District, did not address the disparity between rural and urban constituencies. Â
Also, you heard the Chairman make the point yesterday that the last redistricting exercise took 14 months to finally complete. So, we asked him about the possibility that all the necessary steps can be sped up and completed in time for the 2020 General elections, which are due in a few months' time. Here’s how he explained why the logistics involved don’t seem like a practical course of action:
Reporter
“So, you’re looking at like 17 months total and we only have 8? Â
Doug Singh
“Right, you’re looking at 17 months. But, let’s assume you were able to truncate that to half the time to eight months, or seven months, or six months for that matter. Let’s assume that the resources existed. The ability to actually get the work done in three months and then take it to the National Assembly and wait the three months period before it can be voted and assume it would pass. Because, it would require a certain supra-majority for it to be passed in the National Assembly, which means that both members of both parties would have to support this kind of amendment. The implementation would actually be a nightmare. Because, let’s say then you take your voters list and you break it up into, we have 31 constituencies now, let’s say it would become 33 constituencies for that matter, or let’s say it stays at 31 but it got split up differently. You would not know at that point in time where you’re going to vote. How could we communicate with 150/160/170 thousand voters in this country to tell them that you’re no longer in Albert, you’re in Collet. You’re no longer in Queen’s Square, you’re in Port. You’re no longer in Belize Rural North, you’re in Belize Rural Central. You’re no longer in Corozal Bay, you’re in Corozal North and vice versa. Because you don’t know that, that’s a decision that was made by a committee. When the committee draws the line, how would the voters of this country all 150/160/170 thousand people be aware? One month, three weeks, before a general election. Rolls also have to be printed before a general election and you have to close the dates and all that stuff. So, the logistics of actually conducting a redivisioning exercise before a re-registration exercise is simply impossible at this point in time. Now, was it possible in the summertime of 2018, which is when after the reregistration had comments? Not really, because the total number of people had gone out to register, to vote at that point in time, was small. It was not a sufficient base for the commission to have made a recommendation to undertake that exercise. That would be irresponsible. Â
“In my mind, the exercise should be conducted immediately after the next general election. And that’s my position. That’s not United Democratic Party’s position and I don’t believe that that’s the People’s United Party’s position. I don’t know that they would agree to what I just said. From a logical standpoint, it seems to me that immediately after the election, you have a fair idea of how many people, you know who has reregistered, you know where they are. So, you’re in a very good position to re-split that up. “
