David Burt appoints Marc Bean allies and detractors to his shadow cabinet

Opposition Leader David Burt and Deputy Leader Walter Roban

Newly minted opposition leader David Burt has announced a 13-member shadow cabinet, bringing three of his predecessor’s allies into the front bench – two of them senators – and retaining all the members of the former shadow cabinet.

But Rolfe Commissiong, Zane DeSilva, Derrick Burgess and Wayne Furbert – all members of the rebel group opposed to Marc Bean’s leadership – will be warming the opposition back-benches for a while longer.

Kim Wilson and Walton Brown – who also opposed Bean’s leadership and lost their shadow cabinet posts as a result – are back on the front-bench.

Burt has enlisted all four of the female opposition legislators as shadow cabinet ministers – ensuring the largest female representation on the front bench on either side of the aisle since 2012. Former Premier Paula Cox’s cabinet consisted of five women.

Opposition Leader and Shadow Finance Minister	David Burt
National Security	Walter Roban
Public Works	Dennis Lister
Education	Lovitta Foggo
Attorney General	Michael Scott
Community, Youth and Sports Development	Michael Weeks
Health	Kim Wilson
Home Affairs	Walton Brown
Tourism	Jamahl Simmons
Transport	Lawrence Scott
Environment, Planning and Workforce Development	Diallo Rabain
Municipalities	Renee Ming
Economic Development	Kim Wilkerson

Our Shadow Ministers look forward to serving Bermuda through the responsible and respectful execution of their duties as the Government in Waiting. They will work alongside our extremely capable backbench Members of Parliament to hold the OBA Government to account during every parliamentary session for their failure to effectively serve the people of Bermuda, the press release announcing the appointments stated.

The former shadow cabinet was as follows:

Opposition Leader	Marc Bean
Finance	David Burt
Health and Community Affairs	Michael Weeks
Attorney General	Michael Scott
Education and Training	Lovitta Foggo
Home Affairs	Walter Roban
Public Works and Environment	Dennis Lister
Transport	Lawrence Scott
Tourism and Economic Development	Jamahl Simmons\

Burt’s appointments will be seen as an attempt to unify the party after months of division. But it remains to be seen whether his efforts outside of the parliamentary group will succeed. Coy Millett, the party’s Public Relations Officer under Marc Bean, resigned on Tuesday saying that Burt had ascended to the party leadership through “deceit and manipulation”. Millett is the second PLP member to make public his resignation from the party’s executive.

Some PLP supporters have been bickering openly on social media about the events which led to Bean’s retirement on Friday and the leadership vote to replace him on Monday.

An announcement is yet to be made on who will replace Marc Daniels as opposition Senator. Daniels resigned from the Senate on Saturday.

This article belongs to Politica ! The original article can be found here: David Burt appoints Marc Bean allies and detractors to his shadow cabinet