The question of reforming the Senate has been a perennial debate in many Commonwealth countries. The debate is fueled by the fact that, given the manner of their appointment, senators in Commonwealth Caribbean Senates vote along party lines, thus attracting the criticism that they largely serve as echo chambers of the House of Representatives, ‘rubber stamping ’ legislation coming from that House.

From 1956 until 1996 George Price was the unchallenged leader of the PUP. Apart from a tiny pension, Price’s only asset is a house at 39 Oriole Street in Belmopan, the capital city. Was he a practitioner of Machiavellian methods? How did he, like a colossus, manage to bestride the summit of Belizean politics, unchallenged, for forty years?

The steady outstripping of the Creole population by the Mestizo, the Central American immigrant’s congenital affinity for land, their dominance of the labour force, the Central American market forces that influence trade and economics and the natural force of geography point to greater Central American integration than Caribbean...