BETHEL TOWN, Westmoreland – On the eve of elections to choose his successor as president of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP), Prime Minister P J Patterson has defended Dr Karl Blythe’s stewardship of the controversial Operation Pride programme that had resulted in Blythe’s departure from the Cabinet just under four years ago.

“Whether it has anything to do with Saturday or not with Saturday, I think that I owe it once again to say that the minister who was responsible for water and housing, and particularly for Operation Pride, was guilty of no act of corruption,” Patterson said Wednesday at a handing-over ceremony of titles to beneficiaries of the Hermitage Operation Pride Housing Development in this western Jamaica district.

Patterson’s reference to Saturday was the election scheduled for tomorrow at Jamaica College in Kingston where just under 4,000 PNP delegates will choose either Blythe, Portia Simpson Miller, Omar Davies or Peter Phillips as the new PNP president.

The winner will eventually take over as prime minister when Patterson steps down from that post at the end of next month.

Patterson’s defence of Blythe prompted speculation that he was eager to ensure that he had repaired his relationship with Blythe, who made no secret of his disappointment that Patterson had not reappointed him to the Cabinet after the October 2002 general election.

Blythe had resigned as the water and housing minister in April 2002 after a government-commissioned probe of the operations of the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC) pointed to ministerial interference, cronyism, poor management and possibly corruption in Operation Pride, the government’s shelter programme.

The commission, chaired by retired civil servant Erwin Angus, indicated overruns of $928.25 million in respect of 21 sample projects and another $113.7 million on five schemes that were abandoned. This was substantially less than the $5-billion overrun suggested by consultants for the NHDC in an internal audit completed the year before.

In a number of other projects, the cost of the development pushed them far out of the league of the people for whom Operation Pride was originally designed.

The commission also said that Blythe, when he took over as housing minister in February 2000, went on an expansion spree – overturning a policy that was put in place because of previous difficulties – and told bureaucrats to allow paperwork to catch up with expansion.

However, an examination of the Angus report, conducted by Ambassador Dr Kenneth Rattray, accused the Angus team of:

. failing to carry out a rigorous and in-depth examination of the facts, including documents, before arriving at its conclusions;

. basing its conclusions on assertions which amounted to hearsay;

. arriving at conclusions without providing Blythe with an opportunity to challenge those conclusions;

. failing to adequately identify and separate the periods during which alleged deficiencies existed, particularly in arriving at findings and conclusions relating to Blythe; and

. failing to recognise the special position of the minister responsible for housing under the Housing Act as a Corporation Sole in relation to Operation Pride.

Blythe supporters have alleged that the Rattray report was completed and delivered to Patterson long before the general election, but Patterson only made it public two months after the vote.

Patterson has not responded to the allegations, but since then the relationship between both men has been cool.

On Wednesday, Patterson argued that despite the criticisms levelled at Operation Pride, it cannot be denied that the programme has played a vital role in making land available to the landless.

“However they try to discredit Operation Pride, however they try to conceal its successes, however they try to destroy it purposely, no one can deny that Operation Pride has altered, for the better, the landscape of our entire nation and has provided the opportunity for residential development and land ownership to the landless people in Jamaica,” he said.

He said that there were 110 Operation Pride projects islandwide consisting of more than 6,000 housing solutions and that more than 13,000 titles have been delivered to beneficiaries under the programme.

Patterson, whose constituency encompasses Bethel Town, told the beneficiaries that the Hermitage project is one of the many that has made the government proud.

“The detractors were many, but today, this is one of the projects that the government and the NHDC are proud of; 248 greenfield lots and 62 brown field lots have been completed,” he noted. “I am also gratified to know that all 248 titles have been obtained for the greenfield site.”

The NHDC, he added, was working assiduously to deliver the remaining 62 titles.