Opposition Leader Moses Shyne Barrow Comments on Legal Opinions and Definitive Agreement

Leader of the Opposition, Moses Shyne Barrow, held his weekly press brief today where he spoke on several national matters.  Among them is the legal opinions of King’s Counsel Ben Juratowich and Clarissa Harris and Douglas Mendez and Jerome Rajcoomar, and what he says is the government’s intention to go along with the Definitive Agreement and its terms.

Moses “Shyne” Barrow, Leader of the Opposition: “Yes, so there are two legal opinions from Counsel Mendez and King’s Counsel Jarotowich. As I said, the one from Juratowitch I understand is about a US$100,000. Jarotowich, who is our ICJ lawyer, and Mendez is about fifty thousand so a total of it $300,000 spent on legal opinions when I cannot comprehend or fathom why the Prime Minister and his government would want to go beyond Jaroslawich who is an esteemed, preeminent international lawyer that is defending our territorial integrity. So if we don’t have confidence in him, if the government doesn’t have confidence in him, then something is terribly wrong. But the opposition maintains that the intent of the Prime Minister was always to get the definitive agreement passed into law as was. So as much as they tried to blame everything on Erwin Contreras and tried to put all of the allegations at the feet of the UDP, it is very clear as things are unfolding, as I had said all along that the Prime Minister and some, at least some of his ministers, had a vested interest in Portico. It is abundantly clear, this idea that it was just taken to Cabinet just as a perfunctory, just as a matter of disclosing to them we know the PUP behavior, we know the Briceno administration behavior and if they truly believed that this was UDP corruption and they wanted nothing to do with it that would have been a press conference immediately upon discovering that definitive agreement, blasting the UDP, blasting Minister Contreras and ripping up the definitive agreement then and there.”