Former Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips has signalled that he is not ready to step down as member of parliament (MP) for St Andrew East Central, amid reports that he is facing a new round of cancer treatment.
There are reports, too, that the leadership of the People’s National Party (PNP) has signed off on Dennis Gordon, one of his councillors, to replace him.
Dr Phillips, 73, went public with his Stage Three colon cancer diagnosis in April 2020, five months before he led the PNP to a crushing defeat in the last parliamentary elections.
Sources close to Dr Phillips told The Sunday Gleaner last week that he was due to travel overseas shortly for treatment as he battles a second round of the disease.
“I continue to do tests and continue to receive treatments as dictated by these test results,” Dr Phillips told The Sunday Gleaner last Wednesday while declining to publicly discuss his health.
Gordon disclosed that he has had a “myriad of discussions” with Dr Phillips across “many subject areas and, as far as we know, he will be okay”.
“The relationship I share with him is like a father-and-son relationship,” Gordon told The Sunday Gleaner.
Dr Phillips sought to make it clear that he has not reached any decision about stepping down as MP for the constituency he has represented since 1993.
“That is a decision I will take in consultation with the party and with the constituency organisation, and I haven’t raised this matter with them, nor they with me, in recent times,” he said.
Gordon, who is the councillor for the Maxfield Park Division of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation, said, as far as he is aware, “nothing has been signed off on” for him to become Dr Phillips’ successor.
He admits, however, that his ambition is to one day become the parliamentary representative for the constituency.
“If the opportunity is afforded, yes, I would take on the challenge,” said Gordon, who is also chairman of the constituency.
“If you serve at the local level, then you should treat it as a stepping stone to serve at the central [government] level.”
But the immediate focus, he says, is on Dr Phillips’ health and the interest of the residents of the constituency.
Dr Phillips has represented St Andrew East Central unbroken for 29 years.
“Nothing has subsided because of his situation,” Gordon insisted.
“We continue to put in the work and we continue to collaborate with him. He is still the member of parliament, he calls the shots and we execute.”
Since his election in 1993, Dr Phillips has served for decades as a Cabinet minister with portfolio responsibility for several areas, including finance and the public service, national security, health, as well as public utilities and transport.
He ignited a firestorm of criticisms in 2011 after it became public that, as national security minister, he kept his Cabinet colleagues – including then Prime Minister P. J. Patterson – in the dark about highly classified secret memoranda of understanding (MOUs) he signed with the United States and Britain in 2004.
“None of my Cabinet colleagues had an awareness of the existence of [Operation] ANTHEM at the time when I signed or before these MOUs were signed,” he said of the top-secret operation while testifying before the Manatt/Dudus Commission of Enquiry in February 2011.
He defended his actions, arguing that the MOUs do not allow for the interception of any communication in Jamaica between a citizen and anyone else, but provide for the sharing of intelligence gathered.
Phillips insisted also that he was not required to seek Cabinet approval before signing the MOUs because they were not establishing or changing any government policies.
He was lauded by the Jamaican and international financial community for his handling of the economy during his tenure as finance minister.
After two failed attempts at the presidency of the PNP, Dr Phillips rose to the pinnacle of his political career by acclamation following the retirement of then president, Portia Simpson Miller.
But he walked away from the post after the PNP’s heavy defeat in the 2020 elections.