Leader of the Opposition Can’t Seem to Escape His Past

Shyne Barrow

This week, Shyne Barrow made a move to become leader of the United Democratic Party. He is a relative newcomer to politics, having been elected Area Representative of Mesopotamia in November 2020, after several years as Belize’s musical ambassador.  Despite the efforts that he has made to turn his life around after being deported to Belize, following a lengthy prison sentence in the United States, the former Bad Boy artist can’t seem to distance himself from his past.  In fact, his foray into electoral politics was met with sharp criticism from his detractors. When he spoke with News Five on Tuesday, he said he believes it’s all a fabrication of the People’s United Party, a malicious storyline meant to endlessly vilify him. 

Shyne Barrow, Leader of the Opposition

“This is a narrative that has been manufactured by the PUP and society has to say, “Who are we as a society?”  Do we condemn people to their past?  Do we not allow for redemption?  Do we not allow for rehabilitation?  Do we not allow for the glass ceilings to be broken and for people to aspire to the highest levels of their potential?  So if you’re saying to me that you give credence to any water cooler talk or any such conversation that would condemn someone for what happened twenty-three years ago when they were nineteen years old, I have to question your school of thought and the people that subscribed to that ideology and I have to highlight to you that that is the problem with our society because we have these young men in these communities that are condemned to die in these communities.  So that’s why they kill each other because society says that they are nothing.  This is discrimination, to say that for twenty-three years, I have not been involved in any other incident, that was my one and only incident.  So I am a shining example of redemption and rehabilitation.”