'Bus tour not a campaign launch'
Published:Wednesday | July 20, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
As the People's National Party (PNP) hits the road on its two-day near-islandwide political jaunt, its secretariat remains adamant that the extensive bus tour does not signal the official start of the party's election campaign.
"No, not all," declared PNP Deputy General Secretary Julian Robinson late yesterday in response to Gleaner queries, even as party functionaries sought to put the final touches to its plans.
"We are not viewing this as a campaign activity per se. You would have remembered that the idea originated from K.D. Knight (the senior attorney for the PNP in the Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry), but has been broadened to incorporate other areas as well, so it is not a campaign launch."
He said PNP President Portia Simpson Miller and a cadre of PNP leaders will be on hand to assume the helm this morning at the Naggo Head square in Portmore, St Catherine, from where the bus tour will take off.
According to Robinson, Simpson Miller, fresh from a recent trip overseas, would be in the driver's seat from the word 'go'.
"The leadership of the party will also be there, as well as some of the local leadership in Portmore and the wider St Catherine area," he revealed.
But in response to another query, Robinson conceded that the turnout was likely to be used to measure the level of ground support being enjoyed by the party.
"It obviously will be a good way to test our support. We haven't been on the ground in this sort of fashion for a very long time, so I think it is a good way to test the support," he asserted.
Registering its dissatisfaction
He noted that all three popularity polls (The Gleaner/Bill Johnson; CVM/Don Anderson and Boxill/TVJ polls) show the PNP comfortably ahead.
"But you would want to also get a feel from the ground and this will allow us to do so," he told The Gleaner.
Asked what specifically the Opposition party expected to achieve from its so-called bus tour, Robinson characterised it as a way of registering its dissatisfaction with the way the governing Jamaica Labour Party has operated over the past four years.
"How it had handled the Manatt issues; the total breakdown in trust; the issues out of the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme; the Government's handling of the public sector/civil servants' wage negotiations and a myriad of other issues, and we as a party, want to take our message out on the road, so it's a combination of things," he said.
Robinson told The Gleaner late yesterday that he expected approximately 500 supporters to send off the motorcade from the Naggo Head square in Portmore at 8 o'clock this morning.
"We will have a quick launch of the bus tour, with a few short speeches, devotion and send us on our way," he disclosed. "We have had extensive preparation in this regard."
He added: "The police, with our own internal security, have been in constant dialogue and we anticipate and expect that the routing has been done in such a way that we will minimise disruptions to public activities ... a great degree of thought has been put into the plans to ensure peace and order."