THOUSANDS of People's National Party (PNP) supporters packed the Portia Simpson Miller Square in St Andrew on Tuesday night for an after-Nomination-Day party, and to hear the party's promise to turn "inner cities into winner cities".

Fresh from the day's proceedings which saw the party nominating 60 candidates for the August 27th general elections, the orange-clad supporters began gathering from early afternoon and transformed the former Three Miles Square into an orange sunset.

By 7:30 pm, the large crowd occupied all roads in the square, some stretching back several metres into Hagley Park and Spanish Town Roads, as well as the Marcus Garvey Drive.
It was the first time since the Half-Way Tree mass rally that finance minister, Dr Omar Davies, was seen on the PNP platform. His unexplained absence had already begun to trigger speculation that all was not well between the finance minister and his party.

However, there were no questions as to his loyalty Tuesday night as the feisty minister came out swinging, and challenged the Opposition Jamaica Labour (JLP) to say how they would finance the promises they have committed to in their manifesto.

"Ask them to tell you where they going to get the money from to fulfil the promises they have made in their manifesto. Ask them how you going to do it, to raise $9 billion for Members of Parliament (MPs). Ask them how are they going to pay sugar workers J$3.50 for every pound of sugar they produce," Dr Davies challenged.

The JLP has promised that every MP will get at least J$150 million for their constituencies, which the party says will be a percentage of the national budget.

But Dr Davies painted the JLP as "desperate men and women", and warned the PNP supporters that "more promises were coming". He urged PNP supporters to use the elections to send them back to the Opposition benches where they belonged.

When Simpson Miller took to the platform to speak, she was already preceded by vice president, Dr Peter Philips; chairman of Region Three, Phillip Paulwell, as well as National Workers Union island supervisor, Danny Roberts.
She thanked the supporters who rallied behind their candidates earlier in the day and urged them to continue the work of the party.

"And my government, give a commitment to transform our inner cities to winner cities, so that the people in our inner cities will consider themselves winners instead of what is being pushed at them on a daily basis," the PNP president said.

The platform for this transformation, will be the establishment of the Cultural Industry Development Fund, which will target community development programmes in the urban centres across the island. She said the programmes will give inner-city persons a chance and hopefully the next "Bob Marley, and talented others" will be unearthed.

She said the party was being honest and open with electors and that the PNP would not make promises she knew would be a burden to the people of the country.

In keeping with her plan to find the 25,000 houses which official figures said were built during the tenure of Opposition Leader, Bruce Golding as construction minister between 1980-1989, she said the 'search team' she had sent out could only find 4,000 and they were built by former JLP leader Edward Seaga.

She said houses were started in the Majesty Gardens section of her constituency, but "not even a nail" was driven through the unfinished houses in her constituency.

And commenting on an advertisement being run by the JLP, in which a farmer is rejecting a call from her soliciting his vote, she told the meeting that the JLP was in fact promoting the progress made by the PNP which allowed the farmer to be able to use a cell phone in deep rural Jamaica.

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