Dr Peter Phillips, a senior vice-president of the People's National Party, in announcing his second bid for the position of party president, invoked Norman Manley's legacy and the need to protect it as the main thrust behind his candidacy. He also upped the ante by hinging his run for the presidency on the urgent desire to return the 70-year-old PNP to the core of its original aims and objectives.

His political aspiration requires political gravitas: weight (no pun intended), influence, solemn dignity, sobriety, seriousness of conduct and authority, as opposed to levity. Only time will tell whether Dr Phillips possesses the political stamina or "stick-to-it-tiveness" necessary to carry out these kinds of organisational changes that the PNP must pursue, if it is to regain the support of the masses.

In pushing both leadership and organisational change, Dr Phillips appears to be articulating what Dr Martin Luther King, Jr called "the fierce urgency of now". Such a pity he didn't show this level of enthusiasm during the last general elections, instead of allowing moroseness to overwhelm him to the point of indifference.

While Dr Phillips' ambition sounds plausible, it is almost Christopher Columbus-like in content. Unlike the Spaniards who still believe the falsehood of Columbus' stated discovery of Jamaica, Dr Phillips will have a hard time convincing voters of his Damascus Road-like experience. Some are asking why Dr Phillips never challenged PJ Patterson during his 14-year rule, amid overwhelming evidence that the party was steadily adrift from its ideological and philosophical centre. Also, why he was so deafeningly silent about the obvious "denationalisation" of the PNP.

For, however impressive Dr Phillips' epiphany of what his life's work will be in restoring the PNP to its heyday, it raises questions about the convenience of his previous diffidence towards the entrenchment of certain "un-PNP-like" policies and practices during the last 16 years. Perhaps he raised hell in Cabinet and National Executive Council meetings, and even signalled his intentions to lead the PNP. But having never heard him publicly take an independent stance during Mr Patterson's tenure, such as that taken by Mrs Simpson Miller in opposition to the budgetary cut in the allocation to the fire brigade service, I am left to brood about his latest action.

On the one hand, in fairness to Dr Phillips, as inconvenient and troubling as the coming leadership contest may be for some, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with him challenging the incumbent - more so, because she projects herself as an iconoclast. Political leadership is less about traditions and more about transformation, inspiration, motivation, vision, competence and direction. In this regard, Dr Phillips is within his rights to challenge Mrs Simpson Miller, even if his challenge proves politically counterintuitive.

On the other hand, it is disingenuous for one to imply that the relapse of the PNP, and the precipitous waning of its reputation as a party of vision and integrity, started after Portia Simpson Miller rose to the presidency. If anything, Mrs Simpson Miller's elevation has helped to expose some of the organisational kinks which were hitherto concealed. Even so, political leadership is not, and ought not to be about any one individual. It is about the collective. Therefore, any failing or success must be viewed through the prism of team effort. This does not absolve the leader, with whom the buck stops, from leading and pushing or pulling stakeholders towards organisational goals.

If, as has been propagated throughout the corridors of power, Mrs Simpson Miller cannot galvanise the organisational infrastructure to repackage, reposition, remake and reintroduce the party and its programmes to a hungry public, then her leadership is unsustainable and could prove far more disastrous in the long term, if allowed to go unchallenged. We can't afford for our leaders to dilly-dally, while the problems that beset us constantly outstrip our capacity to solve. We should not barricade ourselves within the clefts of inaction or incompetence simply because we are loyal to a particular individual. Blind loyalty is a foolish pursuit.

Sometimes I find myself comparing the current leadership tempest in the PNP to a basketball team in which each individual player has a certain set of quantifiable skills - skills that are gradable. Linear thinkers tend to add up all these grades and use the results - the sum of its parts - to predict an outcome. However, the mistake they make is to ignore other variables that come into play, such as team chemistry, mood and attitude. Simply put, leadership requires more than hard science. It requires emotional intelligence and compromise.

It seems to me that while Mrs Simpson Miller enjoys an abundance of leader-follower support, there is very little leader-team chemistry and effective leadership, and organisational growth need both. It would be within the PNP's best interest not to create the perception of throwing out the baby with the bath water, as far as Mrs Simpson Miller is concerned. Of late, she has been demonstrating positive shifts from the mundane "political sabre-rattling" that characterised much of the 1970s and 80s, towards the achievement of political consensus and has elevated the dialogue in the public square by articulating a refreshing and sophisticated vision for Jamaica. But has she been fairly treated inside or outside of the party?

Criticisms aside, Dr Phillips should offer himself as more than just a candidate. He should offer himself as a canvas on which to project the kind of leadership Jamaica yearns for and the direction in which the PNP must go in order to recapture the trust and confidence of the people. This is his moment. This is his time to project himself as that pragmatic and transformative figure. Finally, there are several other issues at stake in the coming race: long-term viability, party financing, political education, organisational restructuring, and redirection towards becoming a more people-centred and idea-centric movement.

burnscg@aol.com

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