The only thing that stands between Francis Fonseca and crown he is prepared to take up is his name. Mr. Briceño is indeed working hard but if he is to have any chance at the crown, his on-again, off-again ally, Mark Espat, will have to fall in behind his campaign.

Ask yourself this: if you are an undecided, new voter and you wanted an unbiased, open, competent and analytical review of the issues at play in the upcoming general elections, where would you get it?

Belizean politicians know that party manifestos at present do not play any significant role in influencing the electorate one way or the other. The traditional thinking has been to not give the opponent too much time to one-up each other’s manifesto ideas or too much time to punch holes into it.

People from the developed world continue to be fascinated by Africa, especially Europeans. It is a continent of stark and intense contradictions: immense mineral riches yet widespread, staggering poverty; the cradle of civilization and a hell of unending civil wars;.... Glimpses of the kind of poverty and squalor that is found in Africa can be found in Belize and the Caribbean too.

t is expected that the Secretary General of the Organization of American States will shortly be making his recommendations in this latest round of Belize-Guatemala negotiations. After seven or eight years of protracted and intense negotiations, both countries realized the futility of negotiations and started leaning toward a juridical solution.

Is Belize “a retarded place”? ... it neither fully shares the Caribbean ethos nor that of the neighboring republics, and, in this sense, is on its own. This fosters an insidious insularity, intellectual in-breeding and an outlook not measured or tested against regional or global realities.

When Jesus famously declared in his Sermon on the Mount that the meek shall inherit the earth, did he mean the mineral rights too?

The most recent spate of violence that left a number of Black youth dead at the hands of other Black youth in Belize City has given rise to public discourse on strategies for reducing crime and violence. Is it true that poverty and lack of opportunity is not the exclusive domain of Black Belizeans?

On Sunday, September 30th 2007, the Mothers Organized for Peace led a somber march through the streets of Belize City. They were protesting the orgy of murder of Belize City youth. But what good did it do? Did it achieve anything?

So, will the elections be this year or next? The final decision on the election date is not a thing to be negotiated or debated by the prime minister.