Tonight, Belizeans in every corner of the country desperately want to know: will there or won't there be a referendum on Wednesday, April 10th? And, tonight, even after an emergency hearing in the Court of Appeal, there are still no easy answers - in fact, there are more questions than answers.
We'll tell you all that happened in court in a minute, but first we'll try to put together the pieces to get somewhere close to an answer about Wednesday.
First, we do know the government is still determined to hold the referendum and it's not sitting idly by waiting to hear what the court says. Cabinet held an emergency meeting today at the Laing building - which went from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. We saw ministers from all over the country - and the presence of all of them is an indication of the level of seriousness of the deliberations.
Reports say the Prime Minister wants to hold a special house meeting on Monday. Possibly, this could be to take the writ of referendum to the house for a vote. Again this is just a possibility and an unconfirmed report at this time. But it's important because that's why the CJ granted the injunction. He agreed with the PUP and said it is arguable whether the writ should have gone to the house for approval instead of directly to the Governor General for assent.
So, government could be trying to get on the right side of the judge by taking it to court - to show the judge that they have used their best efforts to cure what he thought could be a defect. Again, just a report of one possible option, but but it is an indication of how determined the government is to get the injunction out of the way, and the referendum, underway. Again, this is reportedly just one of a number of options the government is currently entertaining.
We'll tell you all that happened in court in a minute, but first we'll try to put together the pieces to get somewhere close to an answer about Wednesday.
First, we do know the government is still determined to hold the referendum and it's not sitting idly by waiting to hear what the court says. Cabinet held an emergency meeting today at the Laing building - which went from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. We saw ministers from all over the country - and the presence of all of them is an indication of the level of seriousness of the deliberations.
Reports say the Prime Minister wants to hold a special house meeting on Monday. Possibly, this could be to take the writ of referendum to the house for a vote. Again this is just a possibility and an unconfirmed report at this time. But it's important because that's why the CJ granted the injunction. He agreed with the PUP and said it is arguable whether the writ should have gone to the house for approval instead of directly to the Governor General for assent.
So, government could be trying to get on the right side of the judge by taking it to court - to show the judge that they have used their best efforts to cure what he thought could be a defect. Again, just a report of one possible option, but but it is an indication of how determined the government is to get the injunction out of the way, and the referendum, underway. Again, this is reportedly just one of a number of options the government is currently entertaining.
