The People’s National Party (PNP) did not select a candidate to replace O T Williams in West St Andrew on Saturday after the party secretariat received a letter from deputy general-secretary Linton Walters asking for a group audit of the constituency.

The audit, according to one party official, is to ensure that the approximately 50 groups in the constituency are legitimate.

Two candidates – former minister of information Colin Campbell, and former minister of trade Anthony Hylton – are vying to represent the party in the constituency.

Both were casualties in the last general election, Campbell losing his East St Andrew seat to the JLP’s St Aubyn Bartlett and Hylton being defeated by the JLP’s James Robertson in West St Thomas.

In January this year, the PNP had said that it had successfully eliminated bogus groups with tighter rules that make it mandatory that constituencies show that groups held regular meetings and had democratically-elected executives, a move away from ‘paper’ groups, whose legitimacy rested on them being in good financial standing.

“The groups are now required to hold annual elections, and the results of these elections must be submitted to the party by July 31 each year,” Campbell, who is also a deputy general-secretary of the party, told the Observer in January.

Last year, Paul Burke, the former chairman of the PNP’s influential Region Three, had raised the issue of paper groups and how they were used by some constituency representatives to create power bases and distort internal elections.

Yesterday, at the PNP’s National Executive Council meeting at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston, Campbell told the Observer that he supported Walters’ decision to ask for the audit, which he expected to be completed in another three weeks.

Yesterday’s meeting was attended by a large number of Hylton supporters who heckled Campbell. They made it clear that they did not want him as their representative and repeated the chorus of slain dancehall dancer Bogle’s recording All Dem Deh.

The letter staying the selection date, they said, was nothing but a ploy for Campbell to gain traction on the ground.

The Observer was told that between 480 and 500 persons are eligible to vote.

Yesterday, PNP general-secretary Burchell Whiteman said the deadline for the selection of candidates for all constituencies has been pushed back to July.

Whiteman said that in the majority of constituencies where a representative is to be selected, applications had already reached the secretariat and the process had already started.

He also hinted that there were some constituencies where the party would prefer a wider selection of applicants from which to choose.

The dilemma, he said, was not necessarily in political garrisons.

In his address at the party’s annual conference last year, PNP president P J Patterson outlined a list of things to be done before he departed office.

On the list was the selection of caretaker candidates in all constituencies by April this year.

Patterson has said that he would not lead the PNP into the next general elections, which are due in 2007.