The next general election is four years away - but when it does happen, the political landscape will have been re-mapped and the election will be decided by who's got a majority of 31 seats, not the 29 that have been in place since 1993.
That's the recommendation of the task force on redistricting led whose proposal has been accepted by the Elections and Boundaries commission. The proposal calls for two new divisions to be added in the Cayo District. The other 29 divisions will remain in place, but many of them will be radically re-sized to achieve the proportional representation mandated by the constitution.
In the Belize district for example, the 13 divisions will have to proportionally share 44,000 thousand voters with a variance of plus or minus 15%. That means that the most voters any division can have is 3,913 and the minimum is 2,893. On the ground that means that all 13 divisions will be adjusted with voters shipped in and out to satisfy the formula.
It's perhaps the most significant political development in the past decade and the divisions which stand to be the affected are the most and least populous. On The least side, that's the Pickstock division, which currently has 2,018 voters and will have to take on at least 800 more, similar to the Fort George division which has 2,068 voters and will have to take on at least 1,200 more. While in Lake Independence, Cordel Hyde will see about three thousand of his 6,193 voters go, and in Port Loyola, Boots Martinez will lose about 2,700 of his 5,783 voters. Those types of changes will every district and each will have it's own maximum and minimum number of voters.
It's a fairly straightforward formula and threads the line between the political convenience of keeping the existing divisions, while satisfying the constitutional mandate. But no matter how simple it sounds, the next step will be open warfare when the election and boundaries commission sits to carve up the divisions - that is to decide who will go where - which will have a most unsettling effect particularly on the small divisions which have to take on new voters. On that, we'll keep you posted.