Leader of the Opposition, Moses “Shyne” Barrow is speaking out, two days after the United Democratic Party experienced a historic defeat at the polls in Toledo East. As we have reported, Doctor Osmond Martinez secured seventy percent of the ballots cast on Wednesday. The United Democratic Party has never lost that badly in the constituency. We tried speaking with the opposition leader on Wednesday night at the counting station, but he avoided the media and left the area hours before the counting was concluded. Today, he called a press conference to answer some questions. The first was, what happened? Barrow predicted a victory for the United Democratic Party in the by-election. But, as we now know, that was not the case. He made a similar prediction for the municipals in March that also did not come to past. So, is Barrow deluding himself into thinking the U.D.P. is battle ready? Here is how he responded to that question.
Moses “Shyne” Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
“It is not the outcome that we had hoped for, but I thank the candidate and his team for putting forward a valiant effort. I congratulate Osmond Martinez and his team. They did what they had to do and the people decided that they want Mr. Martinez to represent them in the House of Representatives. As the leader of this great United Democratic Party, I have a responsibility to project confidence. I have a responsibility to fight for every seat. There is not one seat that I can just say we will lie down. Certainly, there were many factors that led to a pathway to victory. But in politics, what you see and what you get don’t always correlate. But the fact that there was a division, we all know there was a division within the People’s United Party, split in three ways. You had the Galvez faction that, you know, he wants to be a rep. You had the Melhem Espat faction. Where they were totally devastated by the convention lose similar to Eliva where she’s railing up On the Facebook right now saying that you know she was shafted. And so those divisions were very real and it was our hope, where we’ve seen a collaboration those forces be fruitful before as with the municipal elections. Because the results in municipal elections were not like this, we actually won the first recount and then lost by twenty. You know, it was a different candidate. We cannot discount the fact that you have a government with millions of dollars in resources. We helped thousands of people in Toledo East. I could tell you that for a fact. You know, school papers, medical bills, all types of help that the people desperately need. But the government has the power to triple that to quadruple that. Um, but you know, nobody owes anybody a vote.”
