When Peter Phillips pulled in third – behind Karl Blythe and Portia Simpson Miller – among the incumbents retained as vice-presidents of the People’s National Party, the pundits began to question his viability for the party’s top job when Prime Minister P J Patterson finally decides to call it a day.

Phillips’ camp, of course, played down the significance of his performance in that February 5 vote, arguing that, if anything, their man had done better than expected, in the circumstance. The spin was that he was sandwiched by an alliance between leadership front-runner Simpson Miller and Blythe.

Now, coming out of last week’s critical meeting of the PNP’s National Executive Council (NEC) Phillips’ handlers are confident that his candidacy is firmly back on the rails.

That optimism rests on the choice, of the NEC, of the 11 members from among them who are to join the officers of the party on the PNP’s executive – the body that meets weekly and runs the day-to-day affairs of the party.

They were all, according to the Phillips campaign, on a slate that had been proposed and endorsed by their man.

According to one PNP insider who asked not to be named, six of the new executive members are favourble to Phillips. Or perhaps more to the point, they are unlikely to be enthused by either Simpson Miller or Blythe.

“Some of them might not have Phillips as first choice but have him as second, and Simpson Miller in third,” said this source.

Those elected were:

. Kern Spencer, parliamentary secretary in Phillips’ National Security Ministry. He topped the list with 202 votes;

. Senator Trevor Munroe (201);

. Anthony Hylton (190), the former MP who is now the energy tsar, who is seeking to represent the St Andrew Western seat;

. Ronnie Thwaites (187), the former MP who now hosts a radio talkshow;

. K D Knight (187), MP for St Catherine East Central and foreign affairs minister;

. Wykeham McNeill (184), MP for Western Westmoreland and junior tourism minister;

. John Junor (181), MP for Central Manchester and health minister;

. Aloun Assamba (180), tourism minister and MP for St Ann South East;

. Denise Daley (178), the minority leader for the St Catherine Parish Council;

. Morais Guy (152), MP for St Mary Central; and

. Len Blake (145), MP for St Elizabeth South Eastern.

Those who claim to know list Phillips’ firm supporters among the 11 as Guy, Hylton, Assamba, Blake, Junor and McNeill.

It was not clear where the loyalties of Daley and Knight lay. However, in the last PNP presidential race in 1992, when Simpson Miller challenged Patterson, Knight was firmly in Patterson’s camp.

But supporters of Simpson Miller – the country’s most popular politician who, opinion polls show, Jamaicans would choose if the entire electorate voted for the PNP’s leader – claim that the Phillips camp is overreaching in its analysis of last week’s vote.

In other words, it’s all a public relations spin in an effort to shore up Phillips’ candidacy, by pitching their man as one who represents the views and visions of the PNP’s mainstream.

“We are in interesting times and at this time you’re going to have people reading into almost anything that happens with respect to representation, with respect to the regalia that they wear, with respect to their expressions,” said Easton Douglas, a former Cabinet minister, who supports Simpson Miller.

In the final analysis, last Sunday’s vote was irrelevant to the presidential race, Douglas said.

“There are some (events) that you can read into,” he said. “There are some that will be authentic, and there are some that you should not really arrive at any conclusion at all. I believe this (the results of the executive vote) is the latter.”

However, from the perspective of Phillips’ supporters, having an executive overseeing the day-to-day affairs of the party that shares his vision can only be beneficial to his candidacy.

“Those people that were elected will go to the executive that practically runs the party on a weekly basis,” said a Phillips handler. “If they are favourable to you, it means you are in good stead with some of what could possibly occur. It is best to put your people in positions of control and decision-making.”

Moreover, the Phillips camp argues, what the vote meant was that “the mainstream saw value in putting those people forward because they represent the mainstream of the party”.

“This is where Phillips’ support lies as well,” said a critical supporter.

Professor Brian Meeks, who teaches government at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies, agrees about the central role of the executive and the potential it could offer for anyone who has strong support in that body.

“(The executive committee) is very central to everything,” explained Meeks. “It’s the acting body of the party that operates in between the meetings of the NEC and annual conferences. .So it’s very, very important.”

At the time, though, Meeks cautioned against interpreting Phillips’ support for the slate elected last week to mean that the 11 members will return the favour.

Shalmon Scott, a former PNP politician turned commentator on political events, is among those who believe that the result of last Sunday’s vote was a significant development in Phillips’ favour. But Scott believes that the more significant development was the failure of known Simpson Miller backers to be elected.

“While it is true that we don’t know where all the people who were elected stand, what is more significant is that those who are known to be in the Simpson Miller camp were not elected to the executive,” said Scott. “So it is not the question of who was elected that is important, it is the question of who was not elected.”

This was a reference to the failure of Senator Floyd Morris, the junior labour and social security minister, who once worked as a deputy to Simpson Miller, as well as parliamentarian Richard Azan, to make the cut last week. Azan was Simpson Miller’s campaign manager during her vice-presidential run in 2003.

The success of the Phillips-endorsed slate, according to Scott, was one of a recent string of strategic victories by Phillips against attempts to derail his candidacy as Patterson’s successor.

The first of these, he said, was the delegates’ rejection, at the first day of the party’s 66th annual conference, of a resolution by Phillip Paulwell to open the vote for the PNP’s presidency to all registered members of the party, rather than just delegates.

By the time the election for a new leader is held, there will probably be 3,500 delegates. With Paulwell’s proposal, perhaps 30,000 registered members of the PNP would be able to cast ballots. This would, on the face of it, favour Simpson Miller, given her broad popularity.

“The second manoeuvre was the last-minute entry into the vice-presidential race by Paul Burke, which backfired on the Simpson Miller camp because it resulted in Simpson Miller losing her status of being the one with the highest vote – the top position on the totem pole of the vice-presidents,” Scott said.

Both Simpson Miller and Phillips slipped a spot, coming in second and third respectively, as Karl Blythe took the top slot.

The third victory for the Phillips camp, Scott said, was Maxine Henry-Wilson’s successful defence, last Sunday, of her vice-chairman spot in the face of a challenge from Paulwell.

Paulwell’s challenge had been touted as yet another move to undermine Phillips’ support base within the executive.

“The type of results that came out of it, where Maxine Henry-Wilson defeated Paulwell by more than two to one – 159 to 70 – in the final tally, indicates the mood of the delegates towards the Paulwell challenge,” said Scott. “It, therefore, would have set the psychological stage for a further rejection of people who they suspect are being backed by Simpson Miller.”