EOJ, PNP secretariat ready for Phillips-Bunting clash tomorrow
Published:Friday | September 6, 2019 | 12:22 AMErica Virtue/Senior Gleaner Writer
It’s all systems go as after weeks of intense campaigning and bitter public spats, People’s National Party (PNP) delegates are set to choose either incumbent Dr Peter Phillips or challenger Peter Bunting as the president of the 81-year-old political movement.
The Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) – which will conduct the polls at the National Arena and count the ballots cast by delegates on a nearly 3,000-person list – and the PNP secretariat have indicated that they are ready to oversee the exercise.
“The final voters’ list was sent last Saturday. We had a final meeting with EOJ on Tuesday and gave them the delegates voters’ list. The general secretary and myself, we will be at the National Arena, beginning around 9 a.m. [Friday] morning to begin putting things in place,” Deputy General Secretary Wensworth Skeffery told The Gleaner yesterday.
“We are having a final site visit at 4 p.m. with the two camps to make sure they are satisfied with the physical arrangements. All we want is for the delegates to come out and vote and do so without fuss as they have done over several internal elections. We expect the PNP to come out the winner when the day is done,” he added..
The campaign has left many PNP supporters disappointed with the tone as well as allegations and counter-allegations by Phillips’ One PNP camp and Bunting’s Rise United unit, according to a party elder, now nearly 80 years old.
“The question people have asked is: Can the PNP get over this? I don’t think it will recover from this one. Not this one,” said the septuagenarian, sadness evident in his voice.
Speaking with The Gleaner on Tuesday, the long-standing Comrade said his involvement in PNP internal elections date back to the 1992.
“I heard about the Vivian Blake-Michael Manley contest. I was involved in the P.J. [Patterson] versus Portia Simpson 1992 contest and also the 2006 contest when P.J. stepped away,” said the 79-year-old.
Reflecting on the four leadership contests, he said the current one is is the worst yet.
“There is one common denominator in three of the four contests: Peter Phillips. P.J. supporters did not do to Portia in 1992 what his supporters did in 2006 and again in 2008. I mean, some things we heard, saw, and felt caused us to go ‘well, well’,” he said, adding that he never expected Comrades to “go so low”.
Continuing, he said: “P.J.’s long, winning run united the PNP, but since he left, PNP has become Humpty Dumpty, and you know what happened. It couldn’t be fixed,” he told The Gleaner.