IN two weeks, Belize will successfully execute its tenth general election and seventh peaceful change of government since 1984. Ninety candidates are in the race for 31 golden tickets. Election apathy seems higher than in recent memory. This is largely because the incumbent People’s United Party (PUP), boasting accomplishments, is likely to win even bigger majorities than its 26-5 majority in 2020. Two of its candidates have already won before the voting begins! The divided and anemic Opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) is offering no serious electoral challenge in most divisions – and have two candidates running in several. Sadly, like most past general elections, the voters are not being offered substantive choices. There are no informed debates on long-term visions or competing innovative public policies to address persistent social, economic and governance challenges. The real choices, for too many, boil down to which candidates and which party have the biggest and best-oiled handout machine. Like all past elections, 2025 will be another microcosm of the good, the bad and the ugly about elections in Belize.
The Good
Aplausos! “Belize enjoys a mature democracy and a well-functioning electoral process.” Such was the conclusion of Commonwealth Election Observers in 2008, and we can expect similar blanket assessments in 2025.
‘Free and Fair’: Indeed, when it comes to our technical record of formal elections, Belize ranks very well globally. Since independence, there have been nine ‘free and fair’ general elections, with the UDP winning five and the PUP four. Voter turnout has been high with an average of 76%. Ballot tampering or election rigging have not happened. We have had six peaceful alternations of parties in power and no military coups. Only once, in 2012, did a losing party (the PUP) refused to accept an election result over accusations that the election was bought.
Electoral Rights: With occasional blips, most Belizeans enjoy basic human rights, including the right to vote, to compete to be in the House of Representatives and to protest on the streets. We have basic institutions to manage elections and sometimes external election observers. Personal access to our elected representatives is relatively easy given our small population. The press can write and say almost anything they want about national issues. While it brings its dangers, social media has made it cheaper and easier for alternative parties and voices (especially youth) to get their messages out and stimulate debate.
Political Reform Processes: Over time, led by civil society groups, Belizeans have engaged in extensive political and constitutional reform debates that have resulted in a few positive constitutional amendments and legislative initiatives. The current People’s Constitution Commission (PCC) is Belize’s second national constitutional reform commission process since independence. As we will see below, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, but some countries don’t even have the opportunity for debating reform.
Positive Trends: Comparatively speaking, we have had a fairly active civil society sector that can and, occasionally do, advocate for policy changes. Unlike other multi-ethnic states in the region, such as Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, Belize has avoided ethnically divisive party politics in its elections. Both major parties get support from all ethnic groups. Since 2000, we have constitutional and legal processes to trigger both referenda and constituency recall elections. And prime ministers cannot serve over three consecutive terms.
And 2025? There is no reason to believe that the 2025 election will be any different in terms of being deemed ‘free and fair’ and in terms of the losers conceding the result. The Belize Defense Force (nor Chester) will attempt a coup d’état. The ninety persons nominated for the 31 seats is more than the last election: 31 PUP, 41 UDP and 18 from alternative parties and independents. Voter turnout will most likely be well below average, but the PUP will tie the UDP’s record of five post-independence wins. Political parties will again make rhetorical promises of electoral and governance reform.
But we know, from studying other countries and our own political history, that ‘good’ numbers about our elections can mean little if elections are not really ‘fair and free’ and do not advance social democracy. We have to assess our record on other variables.
The Bad
Abucheos! I will define the ‘bad’ as those aspects of our electoral system that don’t work as intended and/or that we have failed to fix.
The Scam of First-Past-the-Post: This ‘bad’ precedes the 2025 election but pollutes it. I have attacked our inherited first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all electoral system enough in past posts for you to get the point. As Dr. Harold Young argues, our electoral system is central to our shallow democracy. While our political system is not constitutionally a two-party one, it has become so because only the PUP and the UDP have received enough votes to win at the divisional level. But even when one of these two parties get almost half the popular vote but do not get the majority of House seats, they are almost powerless. The most referenced example was in 1993, when the PUP won the popular vote but got only 13 of 29 seats. The UDP won the government with less than 50% of the vote, winning 16 seats.
How can we have an electoral system that gives zero power to parties that get significant popular voter support? This of course, is the biggest reason why alternative parties have never won a seat since independence: the electoral system is unfair. It leads to a virtual one-party ‘dictatorship’ in our tiny parliaments when almost every representative is appointed to the Executive. In 2025, with the slim prospect that there might not even be an official opposition, we can expect all this to be even worse. Electoral reform to a suitable variant of proportional representation is certainly needed.
PUP Candidates and MPs in-waiting, Henry Charles Usher (Fort George) front, and Anthony Mahler (Pickstock) celebrating their pre-election victory on 24 February.
Two ‘Unelected’ MPs Already in the House! In 2025, for the first time since independence, one of the major political parties, the UDP, is not competing in four electoral divisions! Only 27 of the 31 seats are technically in play if we assume that no candidate of a small party or no independent will win. But it gets worse. In two of the four no-show divisions for the UDP, no other candidate was nominated, apart from two PUP candidates. These two are from the Fort George and the Pickstock divisions. At the end of nomination day on 24 February, the Election and Boundaries Department (EBD) officially announced that the unopposed PUP candidates for the Fort George and the Pickstock divisions were duly appointed to the House of Representatives. No elections needed! Only 29 divisions will have elections.
As such, voters in the Fort George and the Pickstock divisions have no choice, no chance to exercise their right to vote. Thankfully, it’s too late to attempt illicit voter transfers to other constituencies. But who is at fault? For sure, it’s not the voters in these divisions. While some blame the UDP, they could easily also blame all the alternative parties that did not field candidates. Belize is not officially a two-party system – any number of parties or persons can compete.
The real problem is that we have an electoral system that allows it or does not contemplate a plan B. It is part of what needs reform. For example, if we directly elected a prime minister or had proportional representation, the voters of Fort George and the Pickstock would be voting in 2025.
Few Women in Political Leadership: The Belize electoral system is one of the worst in the world for its record on the percentage of women elected to parliament. In the last PUP-led House of Representatives there were only four women out of 31 MPs. In the UDP-led House of 2015 – 2020, there were only two. In 2025, of the nine female candidates running for one of the major parties, how many will win – especially since some are running against each other? And how many of those women will be awarded the ‘big’ ministries?
How in 2025 can Belize be doing this badly when half the population is female and when they do most ‘election’ work? Our inherited electoral system makes it more challenging for historically marginalized groups to be successful in electoral politics and, so achieve the highest levels of governmental power. The political parties themselves have been terrible at recruiting and preparing women for being candidates. If we had a law to register and regulate political parties, it could mandate a minimum number or percentage of female candidates for elections.
No Real Policy Choices: PUDP! In 2025, almost every Belizean knows what the term means and why. Many agree on the why. Over the past two decades, the PUP and the UDP have become so much alike on almost every meaningful variable, that using ‘PUDP’ has become normalised as a funny but sick joke. What we basically have are two right-of-centre parties that, when in power, follow basically the very same neo-liberal policies on almost every issue. Ideological differences play no meaningful role, and they will not in 2025. It makes many apathetic.
In this context, the two major parties compete on blaming the other for all past ills, on the pettiness of personal attacks, on which can deliver more handouts to more people, and on which is more or less corrupt at a particular point in time. Even in the current internal divide between two UDP factions, the catalyst is not which has the better ideas for developing Belize, but which ‘personality’ will control the power of leading the party.
As such, a significant cause of the growing apathy of the electorate and its distaste for politicians is the lack of substantive and inspiring choices. This is largely why the proportion of the electorate that are not core party supporters has been growing. A SPEAR poll from a decade ago showed that at least 30% of the electorate was what we call swing or independent voters – neither PUP nor UDP. I wager that this proportion has grown, and that ‘diehard’ partisans are still dwindling. The key question then becomes what ‘swings’ swing voters? Policy, personalities, inducements?
Other Elements of the Bad
A Sham Election Monitoring Body: The Elections and Boundaries Commission should not be made up only of political party representatives and the ruling party should not be the majority on it.
Lack of Re-districting: It’s unacceptable that it has not been done for 20 years.
Large numbers of people voting in divisions they do not reside: The loopholes for transfer voters in the ROPA are like Swiss cheese.
Stalled Electoral Reforms: Recommendations and promises for improving the electoral system have largely been ignored by both political parties.
The Ugly
Imperdonables! I reserve the ‘ugly’ for the worst of the worst of the bad – the deliberate and/or illicit abuses of the electoral system that reek of corruption and are just plain unforgivable. Here are my top peeves.
Buying and Selling Votes and Favours: It’s damn illegal! Giving and receiving monies or favours in return for votes are absolutely unlawful in Belize for politicians and voters alike. If convicted, politicians and voters are liable to “imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or to both such fine and imprisonment.” (ROPA, Section 32-35).
Furthermore, those convicted are struck off the voters’ list and barred from elections and from being in the House of Representatives for seven years. (ROPA, Section 41). It’s illegal because, in essence, democracy, elections, and access to power and resources should never be for sale. A vote should not be worth money. A vote is the people’s expression of democratic power. It is the power of people to influence the improvement of their society and livelihoods through their representatives. Yet, as every politician will tell you they get daily requests from constituents, poor and rich, for almost everything. And, of course they expect something in return. A short list of examples of what can be ‘traded’ is in the table below.
Bacon Houses: As March 12 looms, the handout transactions that animate Belize’s daily political life, are in highest gear. Financial institutions will see more withdrawals of large amounts of hard cash (fifties and hundreds) as both major political parties, and their candidates top up their war chests. ‘Bagmen’ with backpacks full of cash will be more visible. Dozens of bacon houses (money distributing centres) will appear and disappear like magic. By and on election day, tens of millions will be expended, much of it will be wasted and most of it will be unaccounted.
Many voters across the country, having long mastered the rules of the handout game, are sharpening their negotiation skills to maximise what they can get – often from both sides. This aspect of money in politics is an ugly and damaging game now firmly rooted in Belize’s political culture. It demeans our elections. It distorts our development. In my 2022 book on handout politics, I conservatively estimated that at least 25% of the electorate engage in some aspect of the handout game, and that this includes both poor and more affluent Belizeans. Today that would be over 1,640 voters of the average of 6,593 per constituency. It is only getting worse.
Not this kind of bacon!
It’s getting worse because the numbers of politicians and citizens playing the game are increasing, not only as a function of population growth, but also because more and more citizens (both poor and affluent) see it as a rational way to get what they need or want. It’s getting worse because, the politicians, who started it, in the pursuit of winning elections at any cost, have to find more and money and invent more shady schemes to service the increased demand. It’s getting worse because it pushes political parties to compete more on who has the best (better funded) clientelist machines and compete less on substantive policies. And it spits out mostly low-quality corrupted politicians.
Are Elections Fully Free and Fair? We know that elections in Belize can be won by just dozens of votes. Even if only a fraction of the numerous allegations of voter bribery and of buying elections are true, it means that elections at both the divisional and national levels can turn on who is most successful at buying votes. If political support is bought and sold, does it not lead politicians to treat citizens primarily as clients and not as democratic participants? Don’t some citizens view politicians more as handout agents than as representatives?
What does this mean for our boast of ‘free and fair’ elections? When a significant portion of the votes cast are bought or they come from the ‘wrong’ divisions, some election victories are farcical and hallow shams and scams. Some politicians fool some voters into believing that they can find out how they voted – to prove they voted as paid. And after decades of entrenched handout politics, do all voters and politicians engage in the game voluntarily? By free will? These are questions to ponder because, for some voters getting a handout is economic survival and for some politicians giving a handout is political survival. They are both trapped in vicious cycle that makes a mockery of ‘free and fair’ when we look beyond the clinically technical numbers.
For sure, one other collateral damage of the deep level of entrenchment of political clientelism in Belize is the locking out of alternative voices, women and under-represented groups who either frown on handout politics or cannot afford it. Besides lacking credible platforms, one of the reasons alternative political parties have never figured in Belize’s elections is that they don’t or can’t play the handout game in the first-past-the-post electoral system.
You Can’t Follow the Money in Politics: Oiling the greedy wheels of clientelism, including vote-buying, is a full-time job. It’s nearly impossible to estimate what political parties and politicians spend on handout politics every year and especially at every election. Political parties are not registered, and Belize has no campaign funding disclosure laws. Since 1993 both major political parties have made bold promises of enacting campaign financing legislation. But three decades later there is none! The PUP promised the same in 2020, but nada by March 2025. The promises will come again from both parties. We can only conclude that the politicians do not care. That’s not surprising. But it is sad, that enough people also do not seem to.
In my 2022 book, I estimated (using conservative figures from some politicians) that in an average non-election year, each divisional party candidate (at least 62 candidates assuming two major parties) spent on average at least $200,000 per year per division for handouts or some $12 million per year for all 61. And it’s not only money! That $12 million estimate does not include in-kind supplies, access to services, land, scholarships, and things like X-Mas Cheer, Mother’s day bashes and loan write-off gimmicks. Then in an election year, I estimated (ten years ago) that the average cost of a campaign per division was around $900,000, including funds for ads, operations, but also for vote buying. It could only have increased since then.
So, where does the money come from for the weekly political clinics, for the partisan handouts at rallies, for nomination day goodies, for buses to rallies, for the blue notes for bacon houses, and for writing off mortgages and debt? First, there is the batch of private money solicited from businesses and wealthy individuals both at home and aboard. Some of this money ends up, for example, in those bacon houses and political clinics. The other huge source for oiling clientelism is, sadly, the people’s own money: public funds, public debt and natural resources. When in power, politicians from both major parties find creative ways to tap into public resources and services for use in handout transactions. Over the years almost every budget of government departments and statutory bodies has been targeted.
Corruption and Waste: Based on the above, it does not take much to understand that handout politics and political corruption are as intertwined as good rice and beans. The overlaps between them are simultaneously straightforward and murky. And it all has to do with where the money, the resources and the services that politicians barter for political support come from.
Secret private donations usually result in private gains for politicians themselves (why give all to the people) and also lucrative returns for the private donors. We know the game well. Rich donors get ‘returns on their investment’ through favourable legislation, tax write offs, fee waivers, bloated contracts, passports, plush appointments and so on and so on. In the long-term, the people and the country lose as more public money is wasted and less is collected.
And when more and more public funds and services go through the politicians, the public institutions that exist for these purposes and that (should) have built in accountability procedures and merit-based approaches are side tracked, less resourced and further weakened. Public resource distribution of the people’s own money becomes more politicised and there is less accountability and transparency.
In a context of great social need, inequality and inadequate social welfare, some poor Belizeans do benefit from the handout game. However, most benefits are immediate and short term and do not address root causes and longer-term solutions. Some of the more affluent who do not need get too much. In short, the ‘distributive benefits’ for people are heavily outweighed by the overall damaging effects on Belize’s democracy, development and public morality.
We only tend to get a glimpse into this murky and secretive money in politics game when political corruption scandals break: for example, the abuse of the Venezuela money by the PUP in 2008, the many passport scandals, accommodation agreements and ambassadorial appointments for the ‘Lord’, the UDP PetroCaribe spree, the John Saldivar debacle in 2020 among others.
Normalized Impunity: So entrenched and so open is the exchange of money and favours for political support in Belize, some people don’t even know it is absolutely illegal. This is especially so for younger Belizeans and new voters, many who assume that politicians paying them for their political support is just normal. Some know nothing else.
It’s odious that not even one politician nor one voter has ever been convicted, fined or imprisoned. Before independence, all five court cases brought under the anti-voter bribery law were dismissed. Since 1981, none of the four voter-bribery cases that were taken to court led to conviction.
Why? Because under the weak existing laws, voter bribery is exceeding difficult to prove. Not only does a judge needs proof that monies or favours were accepted as a bribe, but that they were also given with that intent. The politicians know this. Many voters know this. Accountability and impunity challenges are clearly endemic to clientelist relationships because politicians, donors and those constituents who do benefit are all incentivised to keep the transactions secret, to avoid paper trails and to ensure that the pipelines remain open.
March 12, 2025
I would usually end a TIME COME article by preaching about what can be done to enhance the good, stop the bad and counteract the ugly. About the ugly, I could say something like: ‘Addressing the poverty and inequality that help fuel handout politics – especially in a neoliberal world – is clearly long-term. As we do that better, we simultaneously need to explore what legislative, regulatory and constitutional reform measures we can take to mitigate wide-spread and systemic political clientelism.’ But I have said enough of that stuff for now. We all know there are better ways to manage and conduct our elections.
It’s sadly instructive that about the most notable and entertaining thing about the 2025 election so far is what is happening and what may happen to the UDP – and how this may affect the PUP’s predicted victory. In the big ‘P’ political picture, this is utterly boring and inconsequential stuff. I hear people worrying about the impact of it all on our ‘democracy’, as if it is something the UDP alone can save. The PUP also feigns concern.
But our democracy has long been distorted, authoritarian, shallow, for sale and has not provided substantive choices for the Belizean people. Both parties have done little to decolonize our Constitution to improve the quality of our democracy and reform how we do elections. The internal UDP fight of today, like the internal PUP fight 15 years, ago, is not about any innovative and inspirational policy-based vision for Belize. It’s not really about saving our core democracy, about more social justice or more equity. It’s about who will have power when government changes again. And we are trapped into thinking that it has to be only the UDP or the PUP. The sobering conclusion is that March 12 will likely not make a significant difference for the big things that make Belize tick or that make it flounder. Ask yourself: Will your vote in 2025 influence any substantive policy? If not, what is it worth?
While some registered voters may, understandably, be tempted not to vote, I urge other wise. Voting is a precious civic right won through tough nationalist struggle in 1954, For me, it’s even a civic responsibility. Unfortunately, it’s a right that the 7,360 voters of Fort George or Pickstock do not now have. So do vote – even if you just send a message of protest by writing ‘Boo’ or ‘PUDP” on the ballot.
Most importantly, use some time during this 2025 election moment to reflect about how we can all make our votes and our elections more meaningful for the on-going project of nation building. TIME COME!