Patrick Faber Explains Monkey Wrench in Leadership Plan

Since Cabinet announced on November twenty-seventh that the prime minister will remain in office until 2020, there has been an unusual silence within the United Democratic Party concerning its leadership succession.  Deputy Prime Minister Patrick Faber may have anticipated a turn in the driver’s seat as head of government, following the PM’s initial plan to demit office a year early. But that plan has been dashed.  At the time of the announcement, Faber was out of the country.  Today, we finally caught up with him and asked for a comment on the monkey wrench that was thrown in that strategy.  Here’s how he explained it.

Patrick Faber

Patrick Faber, Acting Prime Minister

“You would have to look at the entire history of things.  You would recall that in March 2016, that the party held its national convention in Dangriga.  It also held a convention to select the deputy leader, you will remember, in May of the same year.  But at the convention in Dangriga, there was a decision made to amend the party’s constitution to allow for the current leadership to serve until January 2020.  That means there would not be another convention for leadership until January 2020, except there be a resignation of any of the key offices, that is the party leader, the deputy party leader or the chairman, etc.  So when it was that Prime Minister Barrow announced that he would leave office earlier, it was not by any decision of the party, it was by his own decision.  And so, what people are misunderstanding is that if the prime minister says in retrospect and even if it comes at the request of other members of Cabinet and he decides, well I don’t want to resign just yet, he is not breaking any rule of the party, so to speak, because strictly speaking, that amendment to the constitution says that he has up until 2020 to remain in the leadership position.  All of us do, who fall during that time period.  So even my role as first deputy leader of the party continues up until such a convention is held not later than January 2020.”