Phillips urges PNP deserters to return to fold
Published:Thursday | May 30, 2019 | 12:05 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Opposition leader Dr Peter Phillips is urging Comrades who might have turned their backs on the People’s National Party (PNP) to return to the fold ahead of the next general election, which is constitutionally due by February 2021, or risk losing the country forever to corruption.
Phillips, who was speaking at the PNP’s South St James constituency workers’ meeting at the Anchovy High School in St James on Saturday, sought to energise supporters with the party having lost two seats in by-elections since the 2016 national polls.
“I want to appeal to you with every ounce of energy that I have to reach out to your Comrades, who have strayed, who have been disappointed for one reason or the other,” said Phillips.
During the meeting, which formed part of Phillip’s ‘Party Leader Duh Road Tour,’ retiring educator Dr Walton Small was represented as the PNP’s new standard-bearer for the constituency, replacing the veteran Derrick Kellier, who is bowing out of representational politics. Prior to the meeting, Phillips toured key communities such as Cambridge, Mt Carey, Montpelier and Anchovy.
High-quality candidate
Phillips said the party was now in a new dispensation and that Small, a former principal and president of the Inter-Secondary Schools’ Sports Association, was a high-quality candidate.
““The urgency of the time requires that they step up or they will lose their country to corruption,” said Phillips. “Tell them that we have a distinguished educator (Dr Walton Small) in South St James and that he is committed to the programme of the People’s National Party, which is going to abolish first-class and second-class education in Jamaica.”
According to Phillips, the PNP plans to dismantle the apartheid-like marginalisation of students who travel long distances daily because institutions close to them were subpar.
“We are going to wipe out this foolishness of children travelling 100 miles a day because the schools next door to them don’t give quality education. We are going to mobilise all the retired teachers, all the people who can contribute to a school, to ensure that we abolish educational apartheid once and for all in Jamaica,” said Phillips.