Career Belizean Magistrate Laments High Court Appointment Process  

For the Association of Defense Attorneys, the question is simple: if experienced Belizean attorneys are applying, why are they not even getting a response? The group says more than half a dozen local lawyers put their names forward for vacant High Court positions, but none was selected. Among them was former Chief Magistrate Sharon Fraser, described by the association as one of the most seasoned judicial officers in Belize. Frazer says she did not receive so much as an acknowledgment that her application had been received. That silence, she says, has left her deeply disappointed and has added new weight to concerns about how judges are being selected.

 

Sharon Fraser, Attorney-At-Law

“ I must say for somebody who has been practicing for as long as I am, I was very disappointed because I would have come back to my country, made sacrifices, thinking that in fact there was an association that would fight for me and all the other attorneys in Belize. The truth of the matter is I can’t be c– I can’t go be a judge in Trinidad. I can’t be a judge in Guyana. I can’t be a judge in Barbados. The situation is that I decided to come home and give back to the government and people of this country. I didn’t run away. I stayed, and I did what I needed to have done, and here I am, and I’m sitting, and I’m saying, “Okay, so these people who are being appointed, what do they have over somebody like myself?” And the truth is the only thing they have is that they’re not Belizean. So what does that say? At least that is the question I have been asking. And why I’m disappointed about the release from the Bar Association is because they are supposed to be representing me and other attorneys, and that is not how it felt. “ What is the transparency? I don’t know what they used. I don’t know what was the criteria. I will tell you at some point I didn’t even have acknowledgement that my application was even appro – have been received. All I had the day they announced that first, that, that thing came out from the CabSec is when an email came to me to say, “Sorry, your application was not successful.” Mm-hmm. Nothing else.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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