Aubyn Hill mounted a People’s National Party (PNP) platform on Sunday to declare the party’s founder, Norman Manley, as a greater mind than the American statesman, Thomas Jefferson, who authored America’s Declaration of Independence and who has been hailed for his writings on liberty and democracy.

Hill, a banker recently turned airline consultant, has, in the past, hinted at political ambitions, but without indicating which side he would be on. He seemed to show his hand on Sunday when he addressed the annual conference of the PNP’s Region Three, when Finance Minister Omar Davies was re-elected chairman for the region that covers constituencies in Kingston and St Andrew.

Hill’s comparison between Jefferson and Manley came in the context of his attempt to locate the historical importance of the PNP founder, a scholarly lawyer and World War I hero, who gave intellectual leadership to Jamaica’s nationalist movement in the 1930s and led its independence, first in the context of the West Indies Federation and when the Federation collapsed as a single nation.

During his speech, Hill recalled a story of the late US president John F Kennedy hosting a White House dinner for a group of Nobel laureates and remarking: “This must be the brightest set of minds that ever sat in the White House, except when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Added Hill: “That reminded me that Jefferson was a great man, but we have greater than Thomas Jefferson here in Jamaica. The name of the man is former premier Norman Washington Manley.

“I say that Norman Manley was greater than Jefferson. Why?

He was equally brilliant and accomplished. He was a Rhodes Scholar and beat them up at law every place him go.

But, it is not just because he was bright. The moral fibre of Norman Washington Manley was beyond question. He had the integrity that was straight out of heaven. He started to build a Jamaica that is incomparable.

“Norman Manley was greater than Jefferson because when Jefferson, this big, white man fathered children with his slave, Norman Manley would have considered that to be unthinkable. When Jefferson disowned the children that he had fathered with the slave, Norman Manley would have considered that unthinkable.

“When Jefferson wrote ‘we the people’ for America, our own Norman Manley was the political father of that all-inclusive motto that said, ‘Out of Many, One People’. Give him a round (of applause), great man.”

Hill was not available last night to expand on his analysis of the relative merits of Jefferson or Manley or to say whether Sunday’s speech at St George’s College, downtown Kingston, was his formal political coming out.

Apart from founding the PNP in 1938, Manley served as premier between 1955 and 1962 and is credited with pressing for universal adult suffrage, developing major Jamaican institutions and helping his wife Edna Manley – a famed sculptress – in leading a cultural renaissance in Jamaica from the 1930s onwards.

An outstanding schoolboy athlete and father of another Jamaican prime minister, Michael Manley, Norman Manley was a decorated gunner in the first World War and became an outstanding lawyer, who never lost a murder case. In the 1940s, he argued, and won, in the British courts, an important copyright case.

Jefferson’s achievements included serving as US president between 1801 and 1809, having previously served as vice-president. Earlier, he had served on the Second Continental Congress where he led the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. He also wrote political pamphlets promoting the natural rights of individuals and democracy.

Hill, who served as president of the Bank of Oman before returning to Jamaica earlier this decade to head Michael Lee Chin’s National Commercial Bank, focused on Manley’s achievements and outlined his pedigree in the PNP.

Hill said that he grew up in the constituency of the late PNP Speaker of the House, B B Coke. “When I was in his constituency at age nine and 10… I remember I used to go to the group meetings in the evenings and read the pamphlets from the party and the speeches of Norman Manley,” he told the Region Three delegates.

He credited Manley for his receipt of a good education, starting with his attendance of Munro College, a boys’ boarding school in the parish of St Elizabeth.

“As far as I am concerned, if there was no Manley, I would never have had a chance to go to Munro College,” Hill said.

“. It was Norman Washington Manley that created those scholarships. God bless Norman Manley, because without that, half of us would never get anywhere.”

He urged the PNP delegates to seek to discard the weaknesses that were holding back the party, and urged the leaders to “press forward with the force and the power of responsibility and, once again recommit to practice our politics and manage our government business on the firm principles of integrity and transparency as laid down and practised by Norman Washington Manley”.

Said Hill: “I certainly believe you will not, and must not be associated with the ‘F’ state. Rather, you will continue to build a very successful and modern world-class state right here in Jamaica.”

He said that as he examined the candidates to succeed Prime Minister P J Patterson he realised “that this is arguably the best combination of experience and brains that ever sought to lead the PNP except, possibly, when Norman Washington Manley dined alone”.

-balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com