The campaign for Belize’s 4 November general election acquired an unexpected additional element with the victory on 25 October of Jimmy Morales in the second round of Guatemala’s presidential election. Morales, of the small right-wing Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN-Nación), had made a number of provocative statements concerning the longstanding Guatemala-Belize territorial dispute during his election campaign.
Belize was settled by assorted English buccaneers, pirates, and shipwrecked sailors in the mid-17th century in contravention of the Vatican-endorsed division of the New World between Spain and Portugal. Theoretically, this exception was accepted by Spain in a treaty of 1670, but the treaty was ambiguous and its effects remained disputed by Spain and then Guatemala despite the subsequent recognition of Belize by Guatemala in the Anglo-Guatemalan Treaty of 1859; the establishment of Belize (as British Honduras) as a Crown Colony in 1862; and the recognition of Belize’s independence in 1981 by the United Nations.
Guatemala did recognize Belize’s independence in 1991 and established diplomatic relations, but before the end of the decade Guatemala had renewed its claims to roughly half the country. In 2008, Belize’s Prime Minister, Dean Barrow, proposed referring the dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) following the holding of referenda in both countries asking voters to support such a referral. But neither country has yet held a referendum on the subject, and now Guatemala has a new leader who appears to take a hard line on the dispute.
Asked during his campaign by a Guatemalan journalist what he considered to be Guatemala’s most deplorable historical event, Morales replied: “The most deplorable event – among all the things that have happened in Guatemala, there are certain things that are not spoken about and which I believe we should. Everything that goes contrary to national unity and territorial integrity are things that should hurt us. Something is happening right now, we are about to lose Belize. We have not lost it yet. We still have the possibility of going to the International Court of Justice where we can fight for that territory or part of that territory…I think that it is worth anything that is natural resources and of benefit to the nation.”
Barrow responded relatively mildly to this outburst, possibly because he did not expect Morales to win the election. He said: “Let’s wait and see…Look, he’s made at least one statement that is troubling but I am hoping that if he does win, the Guatemalan foreign policy establishment, the Guatemalan political elite, and certainly the international community will make absolutely clear to that gentleman that any notion of pursuing their claim in a way that is disruptive of the good relations between Belize and Guatemala, that is threatening to Belize, simply will not be tolerated.”
With a general election looming, this was a sensitive issue for Barrow, not least because his United Democratic Party (UDP) has a slightly suspect history on the Guatemalan dispute. One of the parties that came together to form the UDP in 1973, the National Independence Party (NIP), was notably tough on the Guatemala question, but there is a perception that following the formation of the UDP the new party disassociated itself from the NIP’s historical position under pressure from the US. More recently, Barrow has been accused of being soft on Guatemala in the face of provocative incidents and statements, particularly with regard to the serious incidents along the Sarstoon River border in February and May of this year.
Certainly the main opposition People’s United Party (PUP) seized on the Guatemala dispute as a potential weakness for the UDP during the election campaign. Its manifesto began not with a critique of UDP domestic policy but with a fierce attack on its attitude towards Guatemala. The manifesto asserted: “The hard work of the previous PUP administrations that consolidated our security and achieved Guatemalan recognition of our sovereignty has been jeopardized by the UDP government. Their irresponsible actions of appeasement in the face of aggression at the Sarstoon River has created an unacceptable appearance of land cession in the south of our country.”
On the face of it this seemed to be good politics by the PUP faced with a seemingly inevitable UDP surge towards a third consecutive term in power on the back of strong domestic economic growth and a resounding win in the March municipal elections. Having notched up growth of 3.6% in 2014, Belize seems set fair to outperform the projected average growth rate for the Caribbean in 2015 and 2016 of 1.6% and 1.8% respectively. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) is forecasting 2.5% growth for Belize in 2015 and 2016.
But it seems that Prime Minister Barrow was more than alert to the weakness of his Guatemalan flank, and with just a week to go to the election it was announced that Britain is to restore its training and support mission to Belize back to its pre-2011 level. The announcement that the annual deployment of the British Army Training and Support Unit (Batsub) would be raised back to around 2,000 soldiers, from its current level of 900, was made on 28 October during a visit to Belize by the Commander of British Land Forces, Lieutenant General James Everard.
Everard also hinted that the new deployment would involve more than just training. He told the Belizean media: “As you know, we’ve had about nine hundred soldiers here this year. I think we’ll be just over two thousand next year, and I think that will establish a pattern of activity that we hope to maintain over a prolonged period. It’s not just training benefit for ourselves, but this time doing much more in concert with your own defence force to help develop our lessons to mutual advantage.” To put this British deployment in perspective, the Belize army has just 1,156 enlisted soldiers.
Apart from the Guatemala question, the PUP focused its campaign on the alleged nepotism and corruption of the UDP government, and on crime. In its manifesto, the PUP said: “For the past eight years one man wields absolute power in Belize. His family, friends, cronies and fellow ministers have sucked the life blood out of Belize.” The PUP proposed reactivating the Integrity Commission and restructuring the Public Accounts Committee. On crime, the PUP made much of the fact that Belize’s homicide rate is averaging around 40 homicides per 100,000 residents, ranking it among the top ten countries with the highest homicide rates in the world. While the total number of homicides for the country (current population estimate 341,900) fell to 99 in 2013, down from an all-time record of 145 in 2012, the number of murders rose again to 121 in 2014.
The centre-right UDP went into the 4 November contest defending a 19-12 majority over PUP. (The UDP won 17 seats in the March 2012 general election but supplemented these with two by-election victories in 2015.) The PUP, now led by Francis Fonseca, is traditionally supported by the poorer classes, but more recently it has been seen as in thrall to a small political elite. This alienation of the PUP from some sections of the working class has been a key factor in its inability to claw back support from the UDP, although the UDP’s US$150m three-year splurge of Venezuelan aid on infrastructure projects has helped. At the time of going to press, with 29 out of 31 seats counted, the UDP had secured a resounding 19-10 lead over the PUP. The challenge now will be how to build on this victory without the same level of Venezuelan largesse.
