And to that other shot of bad news - although this one is seen as good news in some quarters - International rating agency Standard and Poors has downgraded Belize, again.
The rating on long-term foreign- and local-currency sovereign credit has gone down from 'B-' to 'CCC+'. S and P says there are signs that the Belizean government is becoming less willing to service its external commercial debt.
We imagine that's just the message that the PM was sending in his official announcement of the election date last week when he appealed to the electorate for a new mandate saying, quote: "We therefore ask for your clear instructions to drive the naysayers back; to do something about the super bond."
Whether he meant for it to or not, that word went right back to the markets, and Standard and Poors noted that quote,
"The nature of the statement and prominent public office of the speaker signals, from a credit perspective, lower predictability that the government will continue to service its external commercial deb. [It] raises questions about the political commitment to timely debt service." End of quote.
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