Fernandez rebounds to win Cayo N. nomination

While he may be launching a campaign against the Speaker, Opposition Leader Barrow is more focussed on his party’s campaign to form the next government. Over the weekend, the U.D.P. held conventions in two constituencies: Collet and Cayo North. While the incumbent Patrick Faber’s affair in Collet was an endorsement event, the results in Cayo North have resurrected a former U.D.P. minister best remembered for his controversial behaviour. Three candidates were running and when it was all over, Salvador Fernandez emerged with a victorious seven hundred and six votes, Dean Williams walked away with six hundred and sixty-six, and Sergio Chuc finished with three hundred and seventy-four. There were seventy-four spoilt ballots. Fernandez served as the U.D.P. representative for Cayo North, then the country’s second largest division, between 1993 and 1998. But it was his alleged involvement in the destruction of radio equipment at a Cayo station that landed him in the headlines and in the middle of a police investigation. No one, however, was ever convicted in the case. Fernandez was defeated in the 1998 General Elections by the P.U.P.’s Ainslie Leslie and in 2003 the U.D.P. Executive decided that both Fernandez and another former U.D.P. minister, Eduardo “Dito” Juan should not contest their seats. According to Dean Barrow, the reason was “the perception, right or wrong, that those two ministers were sources of popular dissatisfaction…and it would better for the party if they did not run in 2003.” While Juan chose to break away from the U.D.P. and ran as an independent in that election, Fernandez dropped off the red radar and waited his turn. This time around, the party considered and approved Fernandez’s application. Barrow maintains that the party is happy with the outcome of the convention, which he calls the culmination of a fair, hard fought campaign.