Last night, our headline story was about the announcement from Wil Maheia, the well-known border activist and independent politician from the Toledo District, that he intends to contest the upcoming general elections in the Fort George Constituency.
He made this declaration yesterday during a press conference held by the Belize Progressive Party. The BPP said that even though they disagree with the disproportional size of the 31 constituencies countrywide, they were going to make a bid in key constituencies.
Well, a letter has since emerged, and in it, the members of the Belize Peace Movement are asking Will Maheia to either withdraw his candidacy from Fort George or remove himself as one of the claimants in the redistricting lawsuit.
The Peace Movement is a sister organization to the Belize Progressive Party, and they have a claim in the Supreme Court in which they are trying to force the Elections and Boundaries Commission to carry out a redistricting exercise before the upcoming generals. They are prepared to press the court for an injunction to stop the election from taking place altogether.
Maheia is part of that suit trying to stop the election - but now he's also saying he want to run in that election! You can't have out both ways and in a letter to him dated yesterday Bobby Lopez writes to him saying, quote, "we are gravely concerned that your expressed intention to participate in the said general elections would severely injure our redistricting case before the Supreme Court. We anchor our view in the "Clean Hands Doctrine" that requires petitioners to come before the court with clean hands. We believe that you would be hard-pressed to convince the honorable court that your hands are clean when it is that you are prepared to voluntarily participate in an election with electoral divisions that are severely malapportioned; especially since such malapportionment is the central plank of our cause of action….(We) urge you to please consider the mal-effects that your candidacy may have on our case. We, therefore, ask that you kindly withdraw from contesting the elections, or if you so wish to contest the elections, that you immediately withdraw from the action, so as to not, in any way, injure our case" End quote.
One of our colleagues in the media reached out to Bobby Lopez for comment, and he said the letter was an internal document which was leaked to the public. Our executive will be meeting over the weekend, and we will be putting out an official statement on this unfortunate situation." End quote.
