Email

Print

We've all seen Prime Minister Dean Barrow's speech at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad last month. He had to look sharp because he was speaking right before US President Barack Obama. But reports in the opposition media suggest that Barrow's suit was so sharp its price tag was into the thousands of dollars. Cute story and not the type of thing we usually follow up on, but it was Barrow who laid it bare when pressed discussed it on LOVE FM today when he was a guest on the morning show. So we asked him, how much did that suit cost and who paid?

Hon. Dean Barrow,
"I don't know, this is reductio ad absurdium but I had two suits. One is the suit that I purchased to get married in (laughs). So I am so reduced in terms of not having the kind of cash flow that I used to, that I had to recycle that suit. But Lord man, these things cost $600, $650, that sort of thing. Maybe it is because I wear them so well that they appear to be more expensive than they are (laughs), if they indeed so appear. But clearly the Opposition is really desperate when they will make an issue of that but it does goes give me a chance to say that whatever my suits cost, I pay for them completely out of my own pocket and that is in sharp contrast to the PUP Foreign Minister who went to Taiwan, had suits made, and then billed the government of Belize, had the government of Belize pay for those suits."

Jules Vasquez,
Is that a verifiable allegation?

Hon. Dean Barrow,
"It is verifiable. The records are there in Foreign Affairs, the current Foreign Minister had disclosed this to me and we can make the documentation available."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not furnish those bills. Former Foreign Minister Eamon Courtenay said he had nothing to do with anything like that.