On your marks! In your Clarks! - Holness tells Labourites to crank up enumeration; urges Comrades to vote their conscience
Published:Tuesday | January 28, 2020 | 12:00 AMRomario Scott/Gleaner Writer
Even as Prime Minister Andrew Holness cautions political supporters that he is not ready to send Jamaicans to the polls, he has urged canvassers and other party officials to get their house in order when he tolls the iconic bell.
“One good term deserves another,” was the refrain from Labourites gathered Sunday in Holness’ St Andrew West Central constituency where the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Area Council One, comprising constituencies in St Andrew, held a political meeting.
There was heightened anticipation for the prime minster to give more details on the party’s readiness for elections and hints of possible dates. And he obliged.
Holness, who is also leader of the JLP, said the party was preparing for elections, pointing to his green Clarks – the popular British-manufactured shoe brand – as an indication he was ready to pound the pavement in the hunt for votes.
“I am in my Clarks boots. It’s the most comfortable to walk in and I use it to inspect the organisation, so I go around and I’ll be walking around in my Clarks shoes. When it is time, I will put on my track shoes, so right now, it is on your marks …,” he said, as he prompted supporters to complete the three-phrase term used in athletics to begin a race.
Details in the Budget
He made it known that Clarks was his preferred brand in a 2015 tweet.
However, he was careful to signal that the Government would not disrupt the economy by calling the election at an ill-advised time.
But he told supporters that they needed to pay attention to details in the Budget, which is likely to be tabled by February 11, and urged them to ramp up voter enumeration while Parliament pores over the figures for the upcoming financial year.
Meanwhile, Holness, in seeking to woo PNP supporters, urged them to vote their conscience when they are called to the polls. He referenced a record-low jobless rate as proof of his party’s tag line, ‘Prosperity’, with fellow Labourites displaying several Career sections of The Sunday Gleaner as evidence of an employment boom. But officials steered clear of discussing the country’s anaemic economic growth, which is limping at the 40-year average of less than one per cent.
“Talk the truth. Look how long your daughter sit down a yard with the PNP government, and as the man come, within four years, him bring down the unemployment rate to 7.2 per cent.
“... Though you are a PNP, when you go to that polling station, is you and your conscience behind that screen; it’s you and the truth behind that screen. And if you vote the truth, it don’t [sic] mean that you not PNP, it mean that you are an honest person. It means that you are Jamaica-first person, it means that you want to see prosperity and progress for your country,” the JLP leader asserted.