Each country is obliged to approach this issue in its own best interest. In Belize, the government has already lost the public debate on this issue. That’s a pity. The window to the Diaspora that could let in fresh global perspectives and expel the stale air of parochialism has been slammed shut and barred.

Twenty years after Europe exorcised the spectre of communism, it has assumed a new form and re-appeared in the Americas. It is now the spectre of Chavezism – a portly, garrulous influence bursting with petro-dollars.

The complete banishment of corruption is as delusional as it is hypocritical. Where politicians are gathered, there too corruption will be. Western powers, particularly the United States and Britain prattle on the most about corruption. But their very electoral system with its hundreds of millions in campaign financing sets the table for a cornucopia of corruption.

The ghosts of Central America’s coup-ridden past are running amok all over this issue. Paranoia has overtaken reason; facts upstaged by sensationalism. President Manuel Zelaya foolishly overplayed his hand and paid the price for it. With the courts, congress, the business community and the church against him in Honduras, Mr. Zelaya should commission a new survey – the best retirement spot in Latin America. He can afford it.

Belize lies on another fault line. This one is not geological. It is a politico-religious fault line. Like the Motagua fault, most Belizeans are unaware of its existence. It has the potential of rocking the foundations of the religious denominations and educational institutions of the country.

In a culture in which those of the professional class seldom raise their heads above the parapet except in their own self-interest – and never against their own party – Dr. John Sosa’s act of whistle-blowing is a milestone in Belize’s political culture.

The tenacity with which the prime minister pursued these controversial, non-urgent reforms which lack a coherent overall theme is beginning to look like lack of vision. That he has taken deliberate measures to tighten the looseness of the previous administration and is serious about accountability in government is one thing. Articulating a vision and executing on it is another.

Since its independence in 1981, Belize has not been shy about converting sovereignty into cash. This involved deploying a few innovative, if undignified, tools available only to sovereign governments.

There are two sizeable international arbitration awards staring the Government of Belize in the face. But the government is staring right back – without blinking. To foreign investors uninitiated in the ways of the Third World, it can come as a bit of a shock that a prime minister publicly declares he won’t honor an arbitration award and mean it.

The summit in Trinidad has rightly been described as a new dawn in the relationship between the US and Latin America and the Caribbean. The dawn is not what really matters. It’s how each country exploits that new day, the morning after the remnant echoes of calypso have faded into silence.