By: Omar Silva I Editor/Publisher

National Perspective Belize  I Digital 2025

www.nationalperspectivebz.com

Belize City: Wednesday 9th July 2025

✦ Editorial ✦

 Belize today, power has become a shield and a sword wielded by those who promised reform but delivered only refined oppression. The recent Supreme Court ruling striking out the Belize Peace Movement’s case on redistricting is not simply a procedural footnote. It is a chilling example of how a government flush with political capital and legal resources will do whatever it must to silence inconvenient truths—even when those truths lie at the heart of our democracy.

When the Peace Movement asked the courts to intervene in the grotesque imbalance of our electoral divisions—a documented and indisputable reality—the government did not meet that claim with humility, transparency, or a plan to comply with the Constitution. Instead, it responded with the cold efficiency of a machine designed to suppress. It dispatched Hector Guerra, a high-profile attorney of Marine Parade Chambers and a sitting PUP Senator, to stand as the government’s instrument of suffocation. His job was not to debate the merits. His job was to deploy technicalities as a bludgeon, to shut the door to any semblance of a fair and public hearing.

And so, with the help of an eager legal apparatus, the government succeeded in getting the case dismissed as an “abuse of process.” Never mind that the process is broken by design—delaying, deflecting, and denying the people their constitutional right to equal representation. Never mind that every election since independence has rested on the fiction that gerrymandered divisions are somehow democratic. Never mind that the Peace Movement stood not for personal gain, but for every Belizean voter whose ballot counts for less because of where they live.

The government did not stop there. In a final insult, it left the door open for costs—meaning ordinary citizens trying to defend democracy could be forced to pay a small army of pricy lawyers simply for daring to speak up. This is the message: Do not challenge us. Do not test our patience. And if you do, prepare to be bankrupted for your trouble.

If Belizeans cannot see this for what it is—a state-sponsored campaign of intimidation—then perhaps we deserve the decay of our institutions. But if we can, and if we still believe democracy is worth defending, then the lesson is clear: The courts alone will not save us.

Non-legal solutions are no longer optional. They are the last remaining path to justice. It is time for organized civil pressure, public mobilization, and mass civic education. Redistricting is not a partisan issue—it is a moral imperative that transcends party colors, legal loopholes, and the smug faces of those who profit from preserving an unequal system.

If the Briceno administration and its legal foot soldiers think that dismissing a lawsuit will dismiss the will of the people, they are mistaken. Democracy is not negotiable. And no government—however entrenched, however skillful in the art of evasion—can permanently deny a nation’s right to fair representation.