Vaz not impressed with shadow Cabinet

"No better herring, no better barrel!" That was Information Minister Daryl Vaz's characterisation of the reshuffled shadow Cabinet announced on Tuesday by Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller.

"I would like the people of Jamaica to compare the Opposition's new shadow Cabinet to this administration's present Cabinet, assess the levels of reform-minded competence, energy and youthfulness and experience," Vaz told journalists during yesterday's post-Cabinet press briefing.

Simpson Miller brought back Dr Peter Phillips to her shadow Cabinet to monitor the finance, planning and public service portfolio, while the two most youthful personalities - Ian Hayles and Basil Waite - got the boot.

Two newcomers to the shadow Cabinet are Dr Morais Guy and Ronald Thwaites, who will speak on housing and education, respectively.

dealing jokers

Vaz was hardly impressed with the exchanges of portfolio from one elder politician to the other.

"When you shuffle a deck of jokers, you can only be dealt jokers," he quipped.

"I want to challenge the people of Jamaica to assess the many game-changing policy programmes and initiatives of this Government to date which have borne much fruit as against the stillborn Progressive Agenda of the Opposition," said Vaz.

The minister said the economic policies and reforms being pursued by his administration have been done with full consensus and collaboration for the first time in post-independent Jamaica with stakeholders inclusive of the public sector, the private sector and trade unions.

Vaz also scoffed at the Opposition's dual-citizenship discomforts in the wake of recent revelations in The Sunday Gleaner about South Central St Catherine MP Sharon Hay-Webster's backtracking on the renunciation of her US citizenship.

"I was the guinea pig for dual citizenship. I was not born there. I became a citizen because of my mother, but the judge ruled … . It pains me to see them sitting in Gordon House," he said.