And when he spoke yesterday Home Affairs Minister Musa said that while his government's indefinite curfew will be adjusted, it will not be lifted. In the eyes of the government, it is yielding favourable results in terms of lower COVID numbers. He also claimed that the PUP were within the law to impose an indefinite curfew, even citing the specific section in the public health act that allows them to do so.
Well, today former Attorney General, Senator Michael Peyrefitte read aloud that very section and said it's the PUP's legal advisor that needs to recheck the law.
Michael Peyrefitte - Chairman, UDP "The UDP had made it very clear that is was arguably unconstitutional to have a curfew without a state of emergency being declared and that even if you insist on having a curfew it really doesn't make much practical sense to have a curfew with no end in sight but we take the position and the first limb of that discussion is actually the part that not even the most important part but the minister of home affairs made sure that he didn't know who were getting our legal advice from. Well I don't know which section of the law he's reading because he says under the section 83 of the public health act that somehow, somebody can issue a curfew under there, we don't necessarily declare a state of emergency. Now under section 83 it says that the director of health services may make regulations for the disinfection of houses or parks thereof in which any person is suffering from or has recovered from as died of any infectious disease and for the destruction and disinfection of articles likely to retain infection from such cases. B for the manner of dealing discharges and other ejections from patients suffering from infectious diseases for the safe and speedy internment of the dead in cemeteries as may be set a part for those with disease or from house to house visitation for guarding against the spread of the disease by notice and such other means he or she shall see exceeding and that's the extent of section 83. I don't see which part of this section would give you the right to impose a curfew. Section 10 of the constitution is very clear, people have a right to free movement, section 18 of the constitution is also very clear, that the governor general can declare a state of emergency and restrict that movement and it is usually under that section that you impose the curfew, to say look, we are going to restrict your rights under one section on of the constitution at least let us state that it is for a great reason and we set a curfew in place to make sure that we can manage whatever we need to manage for the purposed of preventing the spread of this disease. When you have a curfew without an end date, it tells us, it should tell us, that there is no plan. Normally when you do a have a plan or you don't know what you're doing or you're stumbling out of the blocks, you just shut everything down for no reason and then you decide when you will come out with some SI at the end of this month to determine when curfew will end, to me is a sign that they don't know that they are doing and they are feeling their way in the dark."
According to Minister Musa, Belizeans can anticipate changes to the current SI on February 1.
