Dylan Vernon’s Expert Opinions on Belize’s Political Landscape

As we kick off an election year, the exact date for the national vote is still up in the air, but many expect it to be called before the end of the first quarter of 2025. The political scene is heating up, with the ruling People’s United Party ramping up their unofficial campaign to win over voters through various initiatives. These include a minimum wage hike, a recent income tax waiver for those who qualify, and GST-free weekends during the Christmas season. Meanwhile, the United Democratic Party remains fractured, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be patching things up before the next general elections. Earlier today, we caught up with Doctor Dylan Vernon, a political scientist who has been closely monitoring the political landscape. Here are his expert insights.

 

Dr. Dylan Vernon, Political Scientist

“We clearly have a situation where the People’s United Party, currently in power, is having, as I said, gale force winds in its political sails.  Coming off huge victories in 2020 and also the municipal elections and having a rebound, economically, after COVID part of which was inevitable but not certainly guaranteed.  And then, I think as I said in one of my pieces, too, there’s been the expansion of NHI, minimum wage has increased.  There’s been a rebound of tourism, sugar is doing well.  There’s a political reform process that is on the way, who knows what will come out of that one.  But overall, economically, the numbers look good om paper.  Unemployment is at its lowest for a long time and the economy has been growing. If you analyze how things have gone at the beginning, especially of the first term of government’s first few months or years.  It always begins well, there’s an upward trend, the economy growing, good things happening and then later on things begin to deteriorate.  So, I say that to say that if this trend continues what we are seeing right now in terms of the People’s United Party’s achievements could be the beginning that all the other governments have had and that we will see, gradually, some deterioration.  So then, political parties, in this context, want to have early elections, as has happened a couple of times in our history.  But the big point here is that the term PUDP is used for a reason because people have seen, since independence, that while parties change and things improve for a while, over time, the constancy of poverty corruption, having not enough housing, inequality, insecurity, these things continue and sometimes worsen.”