Barrow says documents could have been destroyed and investigation sabotaged

Dean Barrow

The United Democratic Party is under sustained and heavy fire. One of their own has been implicated in massive corruption in the Immigration Department and public outcry has been unceasing. While the PM will never admit it, he expended tremendous political capital circling the wagons around Elvin Penner. With that said, there is little for the U.D.P. to be happy about – but today the PM found time for politicking. According to the leader of the nation, the U.D.P. could have destroyed the evidence and sabotaged the investigation, but they didn’t.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“With respect to Citizen Kim, the only…the nationality certificate and the passport that triggered the whole saga were in the possession of our embassy aboard. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have had that sent down to us by diplomatic pouch and to have destroyed the evidence if the U.D.P. were that inclined. No doubt things would have gotten out, but there would have been no smoking gun. That is not the way the United Democratic Party operates. And the contrast, I won’t say with who is clear. Similarly, Minister Hulse’s continuing investigations into all files, all documentation that he can get his hands on, beginning from the time Penner started to sign is an investigation we could have foreclosed. We could have said well here it is, we think Penner has done something wrong, we fired him and that’s enough. But no. we wanted to be certain that this was the only instance, especially if we were to go out there and to say to people don’t recall Penner; he is contrite, he wants to make amends…he is in a mood of atonement and he ought to be given a second chance. The discovery now of the other instances means that we would have to be more merciful than great god in the sky if we did not think that this now puts paid to any question of a second chance to Penner under the egis of the United Democratic Party.”