…PM Barrow Responds to Opposition on Senator Barnett’s Re-assignment

Dr. Carla Barnett

Minister Hugo Patt takes over command at Natural Resources on June twenty-fifth, succeeding a string of four ministers in recent years in a Ministry that has been rife with corruption.  Today, the Prime Minister denied reports that Senator Barnett did not enjoy support from her cabinet colleagues and that they had pushed her out because things had come to a screeching halt at the Ministry.  P.M. Barrow also put to bed reports that Patt, who has had a sudden ascension in government, would make a bid for leadership of the U.D.P. against the two other well-known contenders, Patrick Faber and John Saldivar. The Prime Minister also responded to comments made by the opposition in respect of the re-assignment of Senator Barnett.

Dean Barrow, Prime Minister

Dean Barrow

“No. And I heard them suggest that the move is to empower Hugo Patt so that he can make a bid for the leadership of the party. Hugo has no interest in that, I have spoken to him and he will not be putting in his name. So that is one thing that we can entirely dismiss. I don’t know that colleagues. Nobody came to me and asked me for Dr. Barnett’s removal. There would have been complaints that the pace in the department were still not what people would like it to be, no doubt because that is also the perception; the experience of the public.  So, everybody acknowledges that Dr. Barnett made this tremendous effort but that place is absolute difficult not to say impossible to really move along in the way we’re would like and in the way the society deserves. It is in those circumstances that Dr. Barnett felt that perhaps it was time for somebody else to give it a try because it does sap the energy of any minister who goes to the lands department. That is what it is.”