Earlier this year, we told you that the Toledo Alcalde Association and the Maya Leaders Alliance wrote to the CCJ to get clarifications on the 2015 Consent Order. Well, today that appeal application was dismissed by the CCJ. The judges explained that they do not wish to intervene in the process at this point and ordered them to work with GOB. Here is a snippet of that hearing:
Justice Winston Anderson, Judge - CCJ
"The court is satisfied that the court elements of implementation have taken root and that the supervisory role of the CCJ has achieved its purpose. Implementation will of course remain an ongoing task belonging now to Belize's institutions and communities guided by the mechanisms that have been established. The rights affirmed in 2015 are not museum pieces but are tools for dignity, development, and peaceful coexistence."
Justice Winston Anderson
"The precise scope and extent of Maya Customary Land Tenure will therefore necessarily will remain inchoate and uncertain until authoritatively identified and codified by the laws of Belize. We think that that process is now underway and that it should be given every allowance to complete its journey. We therefore do not think that we ought to intervene at this point in the way asked for by the applicants and instead would encourage the parties to continue the process towards the culmination of the product that we have all looked for for so very long. As my brother Justice Jamadar indicated, if by the end of the process parties are not content with the final product then there are other routes by which that product can be challenged."
Godfrey Smith and Leslie Mendez represented TAA/MLA and Andrew Marshalleck and Samantha Matute represented the Government.
