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Last night we told you about "Belize at 30", a three day conference marking the 30th Anniversary of Belize's independence. It opened last night with a lecture about the role of women in Belize's Nationalist Movement, and today it tackled a myriad of topics ranging from Belize's Protected areas to Broadcast News Media.

One which really piqued our interest, given the recent elections and the accusations made by both parties about buying votes, was Dylan Vernon's lecture on 'Handout Politics' in an Independent Belize. We caught up with him after his presentation and discussed the corrosive currency of handout politics.

Robin Schaffer
"How has handout politics been consequential in forming the political culture in Belize?"

Dylan Vernon - Presenter, Belize at 30
"What I'm finding is that political clienteleism - handout politics as we call it in Belize - has expanded to a very high, rampant level. I estimated in my presentation that about 25% to 30% of the electorate is involved in some way - and that might be a conservative estimate. The money that needs to be collected and pushed through area representatives - political clinics - has to come from somewhere. It comes from private sources, and that has a whole heap of problems in terms of the corruption trail. The other one I looked at was the extent to which more and more people - and as I said in my presentation - rationally decided that this is what they are going to do - to influence politicians to give them something. And in doing this at this level, it diminishes - in my estimation - all the means of political participation. What does voting mean if that is the only way that you vote? The area representative has become almost like a welfare agent. The first person that people go to when they have a problem is the area representative, and there is no where in any law in our country - in our constitution of course - which says that the area representative has to be a welfare agent, but that is after the fact."

Robin Schaffer
"So, who is to blame, the PUP, the UDP, or the electorate?"

Dylan Vernon
"Well, I certainly tried to show in my paper that this is not a PUP or UDP blame thing. From my estimation, it's an elective politics thing that both parties have played into, and both have used. It got to a point where people began to say, 'Well, I can see the power of my vote.' And, they began to negotiate with the politicians for more, and at some point in time, they even - I think - began to gain the upper hand where the politicians became dependent on giving them handouts if they wanted to have an edge in a constituency. So, there is a mutual sort of damaging dependency that I see going on right now, and breaking out of it is hard because both political parties think that they need to do it to win."