TAKING no chances, the PNP presidential candidates are spending millions to bus in, feed and house delegates overnight, funnelling even more business to Kingston’s hotels already bursting with bookings from the Gibson Relays and the Jamaica Baptist Union conference.

Transport costs alone, according to Sunday Observer calculations, will amount to some $3 million, or more. But the cost of accommodation was not as easy to determine – a typical room in the city’s meeting hotels run from $8,000 to $11,000 per night double occupancy, but still undetermined was the number of delegates booked.

Colin Campbell, media director for Team Portia says that camp has secured some hotel rooms for delegates who have declared support for Portia Simpson Miller.

“We have a few rooms in the city. It was a necessity, because we just did not have as many homes to house all the persons,” he told the Sunday Observer.

The Team Portia camp is laying claim to some 1,900 delegates, but a clearer picture of Simpson Miller’s support should emerge at today’s show of public endorsement at the Jamaica Conference Centre.

The candidates are required to complete all campaign activity by midnight Friday, in preparation for Saturday morning’s vote at Jamaica College.

The votes are to be counted at the all-boys high school campus, and the results relayed to the party secretariat, from where the winner will be announced.

Both venues are about a mile apart on Old Hope Road.

“Many of the delegates did not want to come in from overnight. The road network is good and Kingston is no longer far from any area, so by 10 o’clock they will be here,” said Campbell.

The four contenders for the presidency are Portia Simpson Miller, local government minister, party vice president and MP for South West St Andrew; Dr Omar Davies, finance minister, party region three chairman and MP for South St Andrew; Dr Peter Phillips, national security minister, party vice president and MP for East Central St Andrew; and Dr Karl Blythe, vice president and MP for Central Westmoreland.

The final count of delegates to vote in the new party president is still pending, but expectations are the number will fall within a band of 3,700 and 3,950.

Those delegates from party groups overseas are expected to travel here to vote, said Dr Paul Robertson, co-manager of Phillips’ Solid as a Rock campaign.

“I am not aware that any arrangements have been made for them to vote overseas. Normally they come to the conference and vote,” he said.

The party’s deputy general secretary Julian Robinson said the secretariat was expecting more than 150 ‘Jamaica Urban Transit Company-type’ buses to transport delegates to and from Jamaica College for the special delegate’s conference.

It costs $10,000 for an in-town charter, says JUTC public relations manager Gwyneth Davidson.

However round trip service from areas such as Ocho Rios “could cost several times that figure,” she said.

Private Coaster charters from out of town can range up to $100,000 per trip.

Blythe, the only candidate with a constituency outside of the capital, said he was not willing to make his plan for delegates public.

“Those plans you keep close to your chest,” he said Friday.

“We have a lot of movement of delegates that day.

You have a delegate, plus a substitute, and if the two go down it means two votes are gone. But I will not say more about housing delegates.”

The Solid as a Rock campaign said it would not disclose campaign financing or expenses.

There are claims from different camps that the richer campaigns will be spending between $10 million and $15 million on the day of the vote.

virtuee@jamaicaobserver.com