Was “Leader of the House of Representatives” a Deliberate Misnomer?

Earlier this week during an appearance on the Wendy Williams Show, Shyne Barrow referred to himself as Leader of the House of Representatives.  We note that there is no such distinction in our parliamentary system, the highest office belonging to the prime minister.  While we initially believed that he may have misspoken, the Mesopotamia Area Representative subsequently told News Five that he was, “speaking to an American audience. In America there is a Majority and Minority Leader of the House of Representatives.  I am the equivalent of the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. Had I said Opposition Leader, the Americans would not have known what I was saying.  Had I said Minority Leader, the Belizeans would still complain”.  Nonetheless, his deliberate omission of the words minority or opposition came across as being deceitful. This morning, we asked his father, former Prime Minister Dean Barrow, for an opinion on Shyne’s misnomer.

Dean Barrow

Isani Cayetano

“Part of the way in way in which he described himself is the Leader of the House of Representatives.  Now it kind of struck a lot of people as kind of odd because as far as we’ve been following Belizean politics and the parliamentary system, there is no Leader of the House of Representatives in that particular instance, none higher than the prime minister himself.  Share with us your thoughts on this matter, perhaps either he misspoke or he’s out of…”

Dean Barrow

“I would think so because it is true.  If he said that, I haven’t seen the interview but I have seen reports of it and it appears that he did say that he is the Leader of the House of Representatives.  That, obviously, is not a fact and so I would imagine that it was just a case of him having misspoken.  There’s no other way to view it because he is not the leader of the house.  He is the Leader of the Opposition in the house.  In terms of the U.S. nomenclature, he is the minority Leader of the House.  Adding minority makes all the difference in the world.  You can’t say if you mean that I am the minority Leader of the House, you can’t just say that I am the Leader of the House.  No.  The absence of the word minority makes all the difference.”