Section Five of Chapter Nine of the Representation of the People’s Act lists the qualifications that allow persons to vote in the Belize elections. These include that the person must be a Belizean, a Commonwealth citizen residing in Belize for 12 months or more, must be 18-years and over. The Act also lists who is disqualified, but is silent about any infectious diseases. Last week, Prime Minister of Belize, Dean Barrow, said voters who have been required to be in self-isolation or have tested positive for the coronavirus (COVID-19) ahead of the November 11 general elections, will not be allowed to vote. Currently there are over 1,000 COVIC-19 cases in the country.
“It can’t be permitted. If you are COVID positive, you are supposed to be in quarantine either at a government facility or at your own home. There’s no way we can get around that restriction which is a legal one, a mandatory one,” Barrow said. “And If we were to try to change the law to make arrangements to accommodate COVID positive persons who wish to vote, not only would it be, I think, an extremely difficult logistical exercise, I suspect that the fears of those that are not positive, but who already have reservations or perhaps in two minds of whether they will exercise their franchise, those fears would become even more pronounced.”
Belize is the latest Caribbean country to be holding a general election during the COVID-19 pandemic, following St. Kitts-Nevis, Suriname, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. St. Vincent and the Grenadines will hold its general election on November 5. Prime Minister Barrow, who is stepping down from active politics, told reporters that while it is extremely regrettable “that if you are COVID positive, in effect you are not able to exercise your franchise, we don’t see that it can be otherwise.”
“It’s already a hugely complicated, nightmarish system to administer, the proxy system which currently exists in terms of public officers, in terms of the security forces and their needing to vote by proxy. I don’t see trying to in fact extend that to COVID positive people. How do you verify? That is completely out of the question. Now I understand the argument about the constitutional rights but remember no constitutional right is absolute,” Barrow told reporters.
