Businessman and recently-appointed chairman of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Prakash Vaswani, has joined Portia Simpson Miller’s PNP leadership campaign team as its chief fund-raiser, according to sources close to the campaign.

Sunday Observer sources say too that Zein Issa-Nakash, vice-president for marketing of John Issa’s SuperClub’s hotel chain is also a volunteer, hoping to help improve the campaign’s communication strategy and Simpson Miller’s image in the media.

Issa-Nakash, whose family background is deep in the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), was not immediately available for comment, but Vaswani confirmed his involvement in the campaign.

“I am involved,” he said. “I believe that Jamaica is at a cross roads. Portia Simpson Miller is the best person to move the country in the appropriate direction. She can move the country.”

Simpson Miller, hugely popular as a politician, especially among grassroots voters, is one of four persons vying to succeed Prime Minister P J Patterson as leader of the governing People’s National Party (PNP) and head of the government.

Patterson says he wants to complete the transition ahead of the next budget, which is usually tabled towards the end of March or early April.

The other contenders for the job are Dr Peter Phillips, the security minister; Dr Omar Davies, the finance minister; and Dr Karl Blythe, a PNP vice-president who lost his Cabinet post for housing and water in 2002 after a major scandal at a government shelter project, Operation PRIDE.

While public opinion polls make Simpson Miller the overwhelming favourite among Jamaicans for the PNP’s leadership, it remains far from certain that she can clear a majority of the estimated 5,000 party delegates who will make the choice.

The argument is that Simpson Miller’s populist politics is unsuited for the times and that the party would prefer cerebral technicians, like Phillips or Davies, at the helm.

It was very much the same argument that was made against Simpson Miller when she lost the race for the PNP presidency to Patterson in 1992.

Her supporters say that such criticisms of Simpson Miller are rooted in a class-based analysis of politics and leadership.

Phillips is considered Simpson Miller’s strongest challenger and like Davies, who is surrounded by a new breed of corporate whiz kids, his campaign has attempted to carry a broader intellectual message rather than day-to-day bread and butter concerns.

Phillips is also perceived to have the support of several key members of the PNP’s political machinery.

But for Vaswani, who is also chairman of the government’s National Road Fund, Simpson Miller brings an inspirational freshness to politics. He also believes that she will be tough against corruption.

As the local government minister, it was she who appointed Vaswani to chair the NSWMA after its old board was forced to resign in disgrace in the face of a scandal in the management of the business.

The contractor general, in a report on the NSWMA, said the organisation’s former chairman, Alston Stewart, board members and senior managers, routinely circumvented government producers in the award of procurement contracts.

It was against that backdrop that Vaswani was appointed.

He invited Simpson Miller to the first board meeting that he chaired.

Said Vaswani: “Do you know what instructions she gave at that meeting? She said, ‘If you have a problem don’t call me, call the police’.”