We told you yesterday that Caye Caulker has signed a petition to have a referendum to vote on the legalization of marijuana on the island. That referendum will be held on October 8th. But while GOB isn't sure how legalizing it for one small part of the country would work, today the PM said that this has revealed glaring loopholes in the act that need to be fixed ASAP.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"There's not much information that there's going to be a referendum on the 8th of October in Caye Caulker. But what is important, though, what that has shown us that there is some weaknesses in the referendum act that it is allowing no even because of the definition of how to hold a referendum is not properly defined by geographic area, like a district or by a constituency area, it's not been defined. So now we have a village in effect saying they want to have a referendum and legally we could not have stopped it. So we are going to the National Assembly next week to make some amendments to ensure that those things can't happen, because then, you know, any little village can call up a referendum for whatever it is that they want, and we want to make sure that we don't do that, one. But secondly, also that to ensure that if they want to have a referendum, it has to be something specifically just for them that does not have national implications. For instance, if Caye Caulker would want to have a referendum to limit the number of golf carts, it is something that should be done. It should be allowed. But we on an issue of something like cannabis it is something that has national implications. So then we need to be able to define those nuances as to when you could have a referendum, a national or just a local referendum."
