Belize introduces legislation to reacquire telecom

The Belize government has moved to reacquire Belize Telemdia Limited (BTL), more than a week after the Court of Appeal had termed the first nationalisation process unconstitutional.

On Monday, Prime Minister Dean Barrow introduced a bill to amend the Belize Telecommunications Act "to clarify and expand certain provisions relating to the assumption of control over telecommunications by the Government in the public interest".

"With due respect to the Court of Appeal we do not agree with its decision," Barrow said, indicating that his administration will take the matter before the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the country's final court.

The prime minister said that while his administration was making changes to the Telecoms Act , it is "in no way giving up our right to challenge the findings of the Court of Appeal. We still believe that the law was in substantial compliance with the Constitution, and will thus maintain our recourse to the CCJ."

Barrow also criticised the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which had expressed grave reservations about the government's decision to "fix" the constitution to remain in control of the phone company.

ideological blinders

"They act as though Government's acquisitions are in and of themselves aberrant, that this is deviant behaviour. Nothing could be farther from the truth; and that kind of declaration reveals the chamber executive to be wearing the worst sort of ideological blinders," said Barrow.

He said that "the slightest degree of reflection, or the sketchiest amount of research, would have shown them that public acquisition of private property is today a commonplace tool of statecraft and government practice.

"This bill that I am introducing, therefore, fixes the defects in the original law and does so with retrospective effect," said Barrow, noting that the minister of public utilities will have to make a new order to acquire BTL.

This new order is expected to be issued after the governor general would have signed the bill into law.

The prime minister said that he will entrench in the Belize Constitution the requirement that all public utilities in Belize be majority-owned by government.

"When this bill is passed and the consequential acquisition order made, neither the sky nor the investment climate will fall," declared Barrow.

"But this administration would have complied with the overarching requirement of its mandate: to protect and promote at all times and in all circumstances and no matter what the cost, the national interests of Belize," he told legislators.

"We declare today that we intend to constitutionally entrench government's majority ownership of utilities so that no future administration would be able to upset that ownership."

- CMC