MONTEGO BAY — Milton Russell, the accountant for the bi-weekly newspaper Western Mirror, has been suspended following a brouhaha that has developed since his decision to represent the People’s National Party (PNP) in the local government elections.

Russell has intimated that he is being unfairly treated because of his political leanings and maintains that he wishes the suspension to be lifted.

“Ever since I became the chairman of the Railway Gardens Division and it was obvious to (managing director Lloyd B) Smith that I’ll be running in the parish council elections, he started to pressure me to resign,” Russell told the Observer.

He added that he was first told to resign by December 31 of last year, but failed to comply with the request. He was in limbo until the matter was raised, Tuesday by Cliff Hughes on the current affairs talk show Nationwide while Smith was a guest during a discussion on the upcoming elections.

Smith, who is also the editor for the newspaper, unsuccessfully ran in South St James on a Jamaica Labour Party ticket in the 1997 general elections. And questions have been raised as to why he was allowed to make an attempt to enter representational politics but Russell’s attempt was posing a problem.

But according to Smith, new company rules were implemented after his attempt at a parliamentary seat and the matter was discussed with Russell at a later meeting. The new policy, he said, was that management and vital employees would have to resign if they opted to enter representational politics. The new measure was implemented, he said, to prevent questions being raised about the paper’s credibility, and/or its leaning towards any one political party.

“We were reviewing his job status and looking through his conditions of employment and the matter of his going into politics came up. And we discussed it and in the presence of Mr Russell along with the other directors it was restated that the company now has a policy that whoever is going to run must resign,” Smith explained. “And it was said in your case, as the senior accountant of the company, if you decide to run then you will have to resign your post. And it was said with Mr Russell being present there in that meeting and it was agreed on.”

According to Smith, it later came to his attention that Russell had in fact expressed an interest in running for a seat. And he was in the process of trying to set up a meeting with the board to give the accountant a chance to convince them that he need not resign when the issue ended upon the airwaves.

He contends that Russell had something to do with the leaking of internal company matters to the media, the atmosphere in the office had become tense and therefore a decision was made to suspend him.

“The only reason why tension and all this cass cass has developed is because the thing was leaked to the media and has therefore caused an uneasy calm to exist between himself and the board,” Smith said. “And it is against that background that we say we will ask him to go home, he is still entitled to his salary and anything else he is to get as an employee. But we just didn’t want him to be physically on the compound because the comfort level was no longer there.”

He added that the relationship between Russell and the board has now become untenable and appeared doubtful that it could be repaired as the directors now feel that the accountant is being malicious and has set out to discredit the paper.

“He is trying to discredit the company and once he goes down that route he is not only discrediting me, he is discrediting the other directors. And the poor innocent souls are quite aghast at his behaviour and why he is going down that route when, as I said, he and all the other directors and myself have always had a good working relationship,” Smith said. “I think the relationship has reached an irreconcilable level because of Mr Russell’s latest round of attacks on the newspaper and myself and the company on public radio.”