BELIZE-Government says Eleventh Amendment is not about the Opposition Leader.

BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC -Prime Minister John Briceño says Opposition Leader, Shyne Barrow, is taking himself “too seriously” as he dismissed suggestions that the government’s decision to revisit the controversial Eleventh Amendment was aimed at Barrow.

The Eleventh Amendment, once enacted, seeks to disqualify individuals with criminal convictions from running for public office as members of Parliament.

Barrow, who served almost a decade in a United States prison following a shooting inside a nightclub in New York, insists that the government’s motive is clear.

Last Friday, following a lengthy debate in Parliament, legislators agreed to stay the matter after it remained dormant for the better part of two years before it was revived around the same time Barrow filed a motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Briceño.

But speaking on a television program, Prime Minister Briceño said he has noticed that the discussions in the public domain seem to suggest that “this thing (is) about just Shyne Barrow and the Leader of the Opposition, but I think the Leader of the Opposition is taking himself too seriously.

“It’s not just about him; it’s not about him. I think that the framers of the Constitution…made an oversight. We either fix it or take it out of the Constitution because the way it’s set up in the Constitution, it states that if you commit a crime in Belize, if you commit a crime in the Commonwealth, say like in Jamaica or Grenada, Trinidad, Australia, Canada, you can never run. You can never run for electoral politics here in Belize.”

But the prime minister says a person could commit a crime here, go to jail, and “could still run in Belize.

“So obviously, there is a level of discrimination. So we either take it out entirely so that anybody could run. They could go and kill 50 people and still run to represent the people of Belize or, following up on what the framers of the Constitution were attempting to do, to fix it.

“Now, some may say, well, you appointed the People’s Constitutional Commission, and rightly so, but this process started before then, and there have been many discussions in cabinet and among our colleagues as to whether we should finish it. And again, we said, let’s debate it,” Prime Minister Briceño added.

He said when the matter was brought to the Parliament last Friday, “It was after the debate when we went to the Committee of the Whole, then it felt like, okay, let’s pause again, let’s hit the pause button again, and then let’s work this through, and so that’s basically what has happened.”.

But Barrow told reporters that the government’s action “is a further indictment of the failed state of the Briceño administration.

“They are turning Belize into a banana republic. It was a weaponization of the Constitution, a very fascist move, and then they withdrew it at the last minute. So it shows that they are frightened at what you see here today.

“They tried to distract us. They tried to distract the Belizean people, but what you see here today is not about Shyne Barrow. It is about Belize and what we want as a nation, and what the people want is that the promises are kept,” he added.