PNP veterans say party will peak in time to pip Labourites

Acknowledging that there is significant work to be done to regain state power, People’s National Party (PNP) stalwarts and long-time members believe that the 84-year-old out-of-favour movement will peak at the right time, rejecting assertions that it has been exiled to the political wilderness.

Former PNP President Dr Peter Phillips used Sunday’s annual conference at the National Arena in Kingston to rally the eroding base of the Opposition party following a decade underscored by bruising leadership contests and infighting.

The tumultuous period was reflected in the national polls with more than 100,000 of the party’s core supporters withholding their ballots in the 49-14 general election thumping on September 3, 2020, polling 306,034 then compared to 433,735 in 2016.

But Phillips reminded the hundreds of Comrades who poured into the National Area that the PNP remains a vital part of the nation’s inheritance.

He said that generations of progressive people have had a voice in the country and the opportunity to shape the contours of national life because of the PNP. But his appeal for a coalescing of party faithful hinted at factionalism within the party that appears not to have fully healed.

“It is our inheritance and we have to protect it. So if you love the People’s National Party and you’re a Norman Manley PNP, I say, come on board now. If you are a Michael Manley PNP, come on board now. Time come!

“If you’re a P. J. Patterson PNP, come on board now. If you’re a Portia Simpson Miller PNP, come on board. Time come! And for all the people that say them a Peter Phillips PNP, come on board now,” said Phillips, the St Andrew East Central member of parliament, to thunderous applause.

Phillips said that the party was too important to Jamaicans for “personal issues of sideshow” to stop its mission.

The former PNP leader called on Comrades to mobilise nationally in a manner that would reflect the activities of the party in the 1940s and ‘50s that led to independence and ushered in modern Jamaica.

He said supporters will need to go through the highways and byways, into the community centres, schoolrooms, and church halls with its vision.

“We will need a new generation of volunteers and patriots to take up this mission,” he said.

“We call on the young people because you are strong. Now it is your mission.”

His comments were buttressed by former Clarendon North West Member of Parliament Richard Azan, who said that though the party has an excellent leader in Mark Golding, the road to victory required putting pedal to the metal.

“We have a lot of work to do,” he told The Gleaner on the sidelines of the conference.

“If the polls were showing that we were ahead, then we wouldn’t have much to do, but it shows that we’re behind, and our job is to make sure that we go out there and touch every corner in Jamaica, and that is what we are doing,” said Azan, who will remain on the party’s ticket for the next parliamentary election.

Long-time PNP organiser Maureen Webber, who successfully campaigned with the Progressive Liberal Party in The Bahamas last year and St Kitts and Nevis Labour Party (SKLNP) in August, believes that the Opposition party is on the road to readiness.

“I don’t say that lightly because I’m a hard marker and people don’t like me because of that. So we’re on that road. We’re going to spend the next year doing the hard political work, campaigning with strategy and science, not hype. Once we focus on these, we will win,” she said in a Gleaner interview.

Webber said that the dust has settled within the party and noted that the discord that threatened the foundation of the once formidable movement under Patterson, who won four consecutive elections, was a thing of the past.

She said similar challenges faced the now-governing party in St Kitts and Nevis up to November last year but said that the SKLNP was able to rally its base, unite, and claim state power nine months after its internal election.

Ex-senator and former Jamaican high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Aloun Assamba, said the turnout, following a two-year hiatus because of COVID-19, indicated that the future of the PNP is bright.

“This morning before I came here, I saw some posts saying there are two funerals going to be held - one overseas and the PNP here at the National Arena. Not a chance!” she said.

Assamba said that Golding has set clearly the policies of the party and has put the organisation on the right path for victory.