Vega’s Announcement Changes Complexion of U.D.P. Convention
Dean Barrow
In an exclusive interview conducted with Prime Minister Dean Barrow in mid-January, he told News Five that the upcoming U.D.P. convention scheduled for March twentieth would be an exemption from what would have otherwise been an election for leadership of the party. At the time he outlined a chronology that would eventually give way to new leadership. In the wake of Deputy Leader Gaspar Vega’s resignation, the U.D.P. Secretariat issued a release stating that the National Party Council will meet sometime after the March twentieth convention to agree on the procedure and timing for a special election to choose a new First Deputy Party Leader to succeed Vega. We’re not quite certain how the recent change of events will affect the overall timeline but for context, we will revisit that interview with P.M. Barrow.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow [File: January 18th, 2016]
“We’re having a convention next month which is not the convention; it’s sort of an interim convention. We are going to try to get a dispensation from that national convention in March, which is the supreme organ of the party, so that we do not have to hold another convention in two years time. We will ask and fully expect it to be done that the date for the next national convention be fixed not the exact date but by January 2020 so that by the end of January 2020, I mean this is a miles ahead, but it’s just as well to get it all sorted out. There will be a convention to elect a new leader of the U.D.P. I want to go by January so that whoever emerges as the leader can become prime minister and have the nine months or so to in fact read the 2020 budget and prepare the party for general elections at the end of that year. I can tell you while it’s a long way away, already we have a sense of who the aspirants and their exploratory campaign has already started and so it’ll be some interesting time ahead.”
