Enriquez Challenges Handling of Judicial Bias Complaint

Jeremy Enriquez is now fighting on two legal fronts. Days after securing a breakthrough in his constitutional challenge over unequal constituency populations, the public interest litigant has returned to court to challenge the handling of his complaint against Justice Tawanda Hondora. Enriquez says the Judicial and Legal Services Commission failed to properly investigate his allegations of bias and misconduct, while the High Court failed to scrutinize that decision. At the same time, his redistricting case is moving toward an expedited hearing that could determine whether Belize’s electoral map denies voters equal representation.

 

Jeremy Enriquez, Social Activist

“We did not feel that the, that the Judicial and Legal Services Commission looked at the entirety of our complaint. They kind of looked at it in a vacuum rather than the actions of the judge which followed, which include putting a wasted cost order, which include denial of our of our appeal through, Procedural matters and technicalities. It also includes the judge issuing a number of orders without our presence, even a gag order.  So we had to appeal all of that. All of these were hurdles that we had to cross in order to get back to the substantive matter of our case. Part of the reason he threw out our case in that urgent constitutional matter in a very crunch time before election was his ruling that my signature, he questioned the authenticity of my signature. I was sitting in court, and he could have easily asked me if that was my signature. I was there but he just, in a sense, ambushed our case and threw out the substantive case to protect the people’s right for fair representation, and that is why we decided to challenge all these hurdles all the way to the Caribbean Court of Justice, and then these hurdles have been cleared, and our substantive matter is cleared to be heard expeditiously.”

 

Enriquez maintains that the full context of his complaint against Hondora was never properly considered and is asking the Court of Appeal to overturn the High Court’s decision and order a fresh examination of the matter.

 

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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