And while the high court legal dispute has become the center of the story - Enriquez's real mission is to force a re-redistricting exercise. As we have reported - Belize's constituencies are way "out of wac" with Mesopotamia having 2,250 voters and Belmopan having 10,300 - when the constitution says they must be more or less proportional.
That's Enrquez's fight and 12 days ago -the Minister with responsibility for election and boundaries said that the review of constituency sizes is a continuous process.
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service:
"The Election Boundaries Commission is constitutionally mandated to look at the borders of all the electoral divisions from time to time. It doesn't say it has to be every ten years, every five years. They can do that every year if they feel that the need is there to do that. So that work is an ongoing exercise. It's not that they started one time and they stopped. They have to continuously look at the borders and make recommendations as to the electoral borders. So, I do believe that their work has continued, since they presented that last report in 2023. As I said back when they presented that report, I think that they did not have all the information they needed to put forward a proper report. Why? Because the census had not been completed yet. If you look at this constitution, it speaks about the total population. It does not speak about the electoral voters in the constituency. So how can you know the total population that the census had not yet been completed?"
"The census that was released last year shows the population closer to 400,000. So seeing all that, now that the commission has that information, they can now go about doing their job, looking at the boundaries for these electoral divisions. And if they believe that there has to be more electoral divisions, then they make that recommendation."
Jerry Enriquez, Activist:
"I think any time, mister, the honorable Usher speaks about redistricting. I think it is a conflict of interest. He has one of the smallest constituencies that he's protecting. Furthermore, the Elections and Boundaries Commission has proven themselves to be ineffective in doing this. And so we need a whole new mandate, new, fresh, thinking, to transform from the old mindset. So, I have no confidence in anything that, the former minister of Constitutional Affairs says about redistricting because he has failed during that last term and it is a conflict of interest whenever he speaks about it. He should recuse himself also from anything that has to do with, redistricting."
