The ruling People’s National Party was yesterday forced to call a special vote for its four vice-presidents in a fortnight’s time after Paul Burke’s surprise nomination for one of the slots. Expecting that the quartet – Portia Simpson Miller, Peter Phillips, Karl Blythe and Paul Robertson – would have been returned en bloc at yesterday’s abbreviated 66th annual conference, the secretariat was clearly unprepared for the vote.

It took the quick intervention of Prime Minister P J Patterson, the PNP leader, to quickly formulate a compromise, to which delegates agreed – hold the vote on February 5.

Additionally, the PNP will hold its next annual conference from September 15 to 18.

AS he has done so many times in the past, the PNP’s perennial bete noire, Paul Burke, pushed the People’s National Party to the brink of a major embarrassment yesterday with an 11th-hour challenge for one of the PNP’s four vice-president slots.

With the party’s secretariat obviously caught flat-footed and unprepared for Burke’s nomination and to manage a vote, it was a proposal by PNP president Prime Minister P J Patterson, for a special conference for the vote in a fortnight’s time that saved yesterday’s abbreviated 66th annual conference from potentially chaotic scenes.

Delegates accepted Patterson’s proposal.

Everyone had expected that the sitting quartet – Portia Simpson Miller, Peter Phillips, Karl Blythe and Paul Robertson – would have been returned en bloc, given the fact that the conference, postponed from last September because of Hurricane Ivan, was to be held over a single day and there were no hints of a likely challenge.

Moreover, a regular conference is planned for September when it is expected that the PNP will be voting for a new leader to replace Patterson, who is expected to resign this year.

But PNP officials appeared stunned when delegate Randy Mair, a businessman who is a key member of Burke’s lobby group, Campaign for Transformation, nominated his man for a vice-president post.

Burke had long indicated that he would run for the presidency of the party to succeed Patterson, but has said that he doesn’t want to be prime minister.

PNP bosses were forced into a huddle at Patterson’s intervention and the prime minister came back with his suggestion for the February 5 conference for a run-off among the five candidates, the current vice-presidents plus Burke.

“It is the right of those who support four out of the five who have been nominated to express their democratic preference, and I will not interfere or seek to influence that in any way, shape or form,” Patterson told delegates.

He, however, appealed for the delay of the vote, given the fact that the PNP was attempting to compress its conference into a single day, rather than the usual three days.

“We could either fail to get on with the rest of the business, until everything is in place for us to vote late this evening, or we could get the approval of conference for a suggestion which I want to propose,” Patterson said. That proposal was to have the vote in two weeks’ time but with the same delegates list as used for yesterday’s conference.

“It goes without saying that the voters list that will be used in a fortnight’s time will be the same voters list as it exists today,” Patterson said. “.No challenges can be entertained or permitted between now and a fortnight from today.”

Although he has mellowed in recent years Burke, a firebrand leftist in the 1970s and 1980s when he led the PNP’s youth wing, has had a knack for doing and saying things which embarrassed the party or which challenged the status quo.

He once threatened to challenge the late PNP leader, Michael Manley, when the charismatic Manley was in full command of the party. He also on one occasion put himself up against Patterson for the chairmanship of the party when it was widely known that Manley wanted Patterson in the slot.

Although Burke is now over 50, and has toned down his rhetoric and had a seven-year run as chairman of the PNP’s important Region 3, which groups constituencies in Kingston and St Andrew, he has never quite shed his image as the party’s enfant terrible.

Mair claimed yesterday that his nomination of Burke was “completely a spur of the moment thing”, suggesting that this was the reason why there had been no prior announcement of Burke’s plan to seek a vice-president’s spot.

Mair said he made the nomination based on his confidence that Burke was the person best suited to carry a platform of transformation in the PNP.

“There are a lot of critical areas in the Campaign for Transformation and Paul is the only one who can carry it,” said Mair. Despite Mair’s claim of a “spur of the moment” nomination, it was Burke’s own remarks that suggested that the idea of him going forward had been in the works for two days.

“On Thursday evening it (the nomination) was first suggested and (on) Friday preliminary discussions were held,” Burke told the Sunday Observer. “A final decision was taken this morning, when seven members of the delegates strategy committee (of his campaign) met and took a decision.”

Burke said he accepted the nomination because “my supporters felt I should offer myself, because I have a contribution to make”.

“It is also felt that some of the current crop of vice-presidents have too demanding a schedule and therefore do not have the time to carry out their functions properly,” he said.

All the current vice-presidents, except Blythe, have ministerial portfolios. But Patterson made it clear that, in the face of yesterday’s development, the PNP would have to consider amending its constitution to require nominations ahead of the conference.

“We do not have, as yet, a system which requires nominations in advance of conference,” he said. “It is something that we need to correct for the future.”

Burke admitted that his decision to go forward would have caught most of the 1,600 delegates by surprise and that, in the context of the conference, it would have been difficult to hold the vote yesterday.

“I know that if the election could not have been held today (Saturday), it would be held at some other time,” he said. “(I) accept the position of my party and that of the party president and I also accept the decision to have the election on February 5.”

Burke’s nomination from the conference floor meant that the existing posts immediately became vacant and the fleeting embarrassment turned to mirth when he requested that the quartet be allowed to maintain their seats on the platform.

“Is that part of your campaigning, Comrade Burke?” party chairman Robert Pickersgill asked with a laugh.

Burke responded: “Comrade chairman, the party has no vice-presidents as of now.

You declared all positions vacant. So, I am only trying to make sure that the protocol is observed – that we allow them to stay on the platform.”

Staff reporters Balford Henry,

Erica Virtue and Dwight Bellanfante contributed to this story.