Belize’s Prime Minister Dean Barrow called snap elections on September 28th even though his second term as prime minister is not scheduled to end until February 2017. Barrow hopes that his United Democratic Party (UDP) can capitalize on lingering divisions within the main opposition People’s United Party (PUP) to pick up a few seats in the 31-seat parliament on November 4th.
The economy (favoring the UDP), corruption (favoring the PUP), and an ongoing territorial spat with neighbouring Guatemala (favoring ?) were likely to dominate the campaign, which the battle-hardened UDP, with its better funding, currently looked most likely to win, (Glenn) Tillett said.
There’s also speculation that Barrow and the UDP wanted to take advantage of the benefits of Petrocaribe before they were exhausted and voters turned against them. While not to the same level, Belize has begun to suffer the same challenges of its neighbors – increased drug, timber and human trafficking, gang violence, corruption, general violence, money laundering, etc.
