Prime Minister P J Patterson yesterday told unprepared or reluctant PNP councillors to move over and make space for others, amid reports of an incipient rebellion by some senior members of the St Catherine local government stung at having to face party interviews for selection for next March’s municipal elections.

Significantly, Patterson chose a meeting at the Dinthill High School in St Catherine of his People’s National Party’s National Executive Council (NEC) to deliver his buckle-down-or-else message. It came only days after the first public signs of the muscle-flexing in the parish.

Warning that the local government elections would not be postponed again, Patterson declared: “Those who are not ready to saddle up and hit the road, tell us.

“Move aside and let the rest of us go out there to win the next local government election and ensure that we can continue the progress not only at the central level but also at the parish council level… and thereby develop a better quality of life for the Jamaican people.”

At last Thursday’s regular meeting of the St Catherine Parish Council, long-standing member for the Old Harbour division, Ralston Wilson, publicly declared that he would not appear before a four-member parish interviewing panel set up by the party.

“I consider myself to be a senior representative of my party – someone who has given 30-odd years as a PNP worker,” Wilson declared. “I would rather not go back than to take the interview. I am not going.”

He had four times previously appeared before such panels, Wilson said, but he had “nothing to prove to anyone”.

The interviewing panel is made up of:

. Senator Keste Miller, a senior member of the PNP’s Region 4 organisation;

. Stella Wilkins, a former councillor;

. Garfield Angus, national organiser for the PNP Youth Organisation; and

. Desmond Lindsay, a Region 4 organiser.

While Wilson was the only councillor to make this public show of defiance, at least four other councillors, who asked that their names be withheld, insisted that they would not appear before the Miller panel.

They cited their seniority, track record and service to the party. One of this group said he had written to party chairman, Robert Pickersgill, questioning his need to be interviewed.

However, up to Friday, 16 of the 26 PNP councillors in the St Catherine local government, including Deputy Mayor Denise Daley, had already faced the board. Another four caretakers had also been interviewed.

Daley said she had no concern about appearing before Miller’s group.

“I am an experienced councillor, and based on my service and work in my community, the party should have nothing against me,” she said. “I believe in the democratic process of the party and I think the interview is both transparent and democratic.”

The position of the chairman of the St Catherine council and Spanish Town’s mayor, Owen Stephenson, remained unclear.

Stephenson was reluctant to comment and declined to definitively state his position.