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But, he'll have a lot less to do - because - without any announcement being made via official means - his minister lost a big chunk of his portfolio. Jules Vasquez reports:

On paper it looks like the same Ministry - Minister of Agriculture, Food Security & Enterprise - but even though he's fourth on the last of portfolio assignments - indicating seniority - it turns out that Jose Mai got a major downgrade. He was stripped of the sugar industry. In a recent interview on Channel 5, the Prime Minister said the change came out of a crisis meeting with ASR in Miami:

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I had to do, literally, an emergency trip to meet the owners and managers of ASR. Because they had some serious concerns in Belize and the way the sugar industry was being managed and the challenges that they were facing. I think we managed to have something there. So now sugar is directly under me and I'm asking Dr Martinez as the Minister of State in Economic Development to look after it on a day to day basis."

That meeting was held on February 6th,and because of it, Osmond Martinez now emerges as the most powerful Minister of State in the government with economic Development and the all important Sugar Industry tacked onto his portfolio.

For Jose Mai, it is a humiliation, and for the cane farmers whose interests he safeguarded as one of them - perhaps a betrayal - Martinez is not a norteno and not a farmer.

And vested interests in the north may now also ask - is the world's largest refiner and marketer of cane sugar, the ASR Group, dictating how the PM makes assignments in his own Cabinet?

And this demotion also fairly begs the question, what else did he agree to in Miami?

For Jose Mai, who has fought frontline battles in the industry - and who has long clashed with the PM over the role of ASR, he has now taken his last stand. We wait and see who will take it the next time negotiation for a commercial agreement comes around.

Mai could not be reached for comment today.