Senate (Belize)

17°15′04″N 88°46′23″W / 17.2512°N 88.7730°W / 17.2512; -88.7730

The Senate is the upper chamber of the National Assembly of Belize. It has 13 members appointed for a five-year term by the Governor-General.

Senators are appointed by the Governor-General in the following manners:

In practice, the party that wins the general election (by capturing the most seats in the lower house of representatives) also controls the Senate. In previous incarnations, eight senators were appointed, five by the prime minister, two by the leader of the opposition and one by the governor general and the Belize Advisory Council. One more senator was given to the opposition beginning in the 1990s.

Occasionally, a prime minister may find it necessary to appoint a senator to a post in the Cabinet. The first such instance was for C.L.B. Rogers under George Price in 1979 after losing his seat in the House. Price also appointed Ralph Fonseca, who did not run in the 1989 general election, to a minister of state post until he ran and won in a newly created constituency in 1993.

In 1997, the UDP appointed the Belizean ambassador to Mexico, Alfredo "Fred" Martinez, a senator to also serve in Cabinet as minister of trade and industry, thereby relinquishing his ambassadorial appointment, to which he would later return.

Former Senator Richard "Dickie" Bradley twice lost elections to the House and was appointed a senator and given a Cabinet post each time.

Following the 2012 general elections, the UDP lost its supermajority and exercised its constitutional limit to appointing four senators to serve as ministers. One, Godwin Hulse, had been a senator dating back to 2006 and was appointed leader of government business in the House, while three others were newcomers to national administration (Charles Gibson is a former senior public officer and was CEO under John Saldivar in the Ministry of the Public Service; he was appointed as minister for that portfolio in 2012.)