Walter Roban has had a steady rise within the PLP

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Walter Roban was elected Progressive Labour Party MP for Pembroke East in the December 2007 general election.

He had previously served as a Government senator between 2003 and 2006, where he held the junior ministerial portfolios of Health and Family Services; Tourism and Transport; and Education and Development.

Mr Roban was made Junior Minister of Labour, Home Affairs and Housing in February 2008 and appointed to Cabinet in June 2009 as Minister without Portfolio.

He became Health Minister in September 2009, following the death of Nelson Bascome.

In November 2010, new Premier Paula Cox made him Environment Minister, before switching him to Public Works in a Cabinet reshuffle a year later.

He lasted just 16 days in that role, however, quitting Cabinet due to intense criticism about his decision to grant planning permission for PLP colleagues Zane DeSilva and Wayne Furbert on his final day as Environment Minister.

Mr Roban told The Royal Gazette after resigning: “It’s not making the decisions I regret. It’s the negativity that has pervaded around the decisions themselves.”

The Morehouse College graduate and banker joined the PLP’s youth wing in the late 1980s, serving as its chairman and representative to the party’s central committee from 1991 to 1993.

In 1995, he was elected secretary general of the PLP, which he held until August 1999.

Mr Roban served as deputy chairman of the PLP’s campaign committee for the November 1998 general election and is described by the party as “playing a key role in all aspects of the historic national election campaign”.

Useful website: www.plp.bm.

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