THE Jamaica Labour Party last week claimed Aubyn Hill as one of its registered members, saying he had applied and was accepted six years ago.

Hill would have been in line for a post in the administration if the JLP had won the 2002 general election, according to a senior JLP official who said he processed Hill’s application around 1999.

“As far as I am concerned he is still a member,” said Arthur Williams, the JLP’s former general secretary. “He hasn’t resigned.”

But, last night Hill said he was not now a member.

“In the past, I have been.”

He told the Sunday Observer that he was invited to speak at a G2K conference, was subsequently a guest at the JLP headquarters, and was registered by the party, but never actively sought membership.

At the time he was still living and working in Oman, and returned there after the engagement, he said, adding that he allowed the membership to lapse.

Hill, formerly the president of the Bank of Oman, returned to Jamaica at the turn of the decade as managing director of Michael Lee Chin’s National Commercial Bank (NCB), until he left that post last year and set up a business/management consultancy.

Even then, he did not resuscitate his membership in the JLP, he said, and has paid no dues.

“I have joined neither the JLP nor the PNP,” he said. “The truth is, I am a neophyte.”

Suave, articulate and a man who would likely be considered a good political catch, Hill raised speculation late last month that he might enter the camp of the governing People’s National Party when he spoke at the conference of the party’s Region 3.

In that speech Hill declared PNP founder, Norman Manley, to have been “better” than Thomas Jefferson, the key drafter of America’s Declaration of Independence.

However, in a long article, published in September 5 issue of the Daily Observer, clarifying nuances in the reporting of his Region 3 speech, Hill took issue with the story’s suggestion that he had, in the past, hinted at political ambitions.

He wrote: “In fact, I have always done the opposite. I have made it very clear that I do not wish to enter representational politics but would find other ways to serve my country. It is natural to want to put people in defined boxes – it is easier to label them that way. If someone needs to box me, they can put me in the “nationalist” box. I fit and feel most comfortable in that space with that label.”

On that basis, Hill said, if he was asked to speak at a similar event of the JLP he would easily oblige, making the point that Region 3 chairman, the finance minister Omar Davies, has stressed he did not know Hill’s politics.

However, several JLP officials, including some who claimed to have been involved in a committee’s evaluation of Hill’s proposed membership of the party, expressed surprise at the former banker’s assertion of lack of partisan political ambitions.

Hill, they said, was introduced to the JLP’s Standing Committee, by former leader Edward Seaga, applied for membership and went through the process.

They however conceded that Hill may not now be in good financial standing with the party as a paid-up member, but argued that this did not remove his membership.

“I feel pretty certain he would have been given a position in the government or the public sector if we (the JLP) had won in 2002,” said Williams.