Abe Dabdoub yesterday resigned from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in an apparent move to avoid a challenge for his chairmanship of the Opposition party’s organisation in North East St Catherine.

Dabdoub’s resignation was confirmed by JLP general-secretary Karl Samuda, who told the Observer that the matter will be discussed at the weekly meeting of the JLP’s Standing Committee tonight.

“I received a letter of resignation from Mr Dabdoub this afternoon in which he said he doesn’t find it possible to remain a member of the JLP,” Samuda said.

Samuda said that someone other than Dabdoub handed him the letter when he arrived at a meeting of Dabdoub’s constituency executive, called by Dabdoub for the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, to discuss the possible candidacy of Gregory Mair.

“When I got there he (Dabdoub) was not there,” Samuda said.

Mair, JLP sources said, has shown interest in the North East St Catherine seat and had gone through the process of being approved as a challenger by the party’s Selection Committee.

Under the JLP’s constitution, anyone can mount a challenge for a constituency chairmanship by demonstrating to the Selection Committee that he/she has 30 per cent delegate support in the constituency.

Yesterday, JLP sources told the Observer that Mair had secured 60 per cent of the delegates, mostly because of the alleged neglected of the constituency.

Efforts to get a comment from Dabdoub up to last night were unsuccessful, as his phones either rang without answer or were busy.

Dabdoub was declared winner of the North East St Catherine seat by the courts in 2001 after he appealed the 1997 election result which showed that the People’s National Party’s Phyllis Mitchell had won by 30 votes. Dabdoub, the court ruled, had polled 32 more votes than Mitchell. He went on to win the seat in the 2002 general election.

Since then, however, he has been accused of neglecting the constituency, angering his party workers and residents.

Yesterday Daryl Vaz, who two Sundays ago trounced incumbent Kenneth Rowe 175 to 67 votes for the chairmanship of the West Portland constituency, related Rowe’s fate to Dabdoub’s.

Vaz said all the incumbents who don’t take care of their constituencies must face the challengers. “What the JLP wants now is not runners, it wants winners.”

Dabdoub’s is the second resignation to be submitted to the party in recent weeks. Three-time general election loser Dennis Wright quit the East St Thomas chair at the end of February after Trevor Chin met the requirements for mounting a challenge.

Labour Party sources say they expect more resignations as the constitution is now being followed in terms of how constituency caretakers are chosen. “People are no longer being protected because of their loyalty to an individual,” one JLP insider said.

The insider also said that for some time Dabdoub has been expressing dissatisfaction with the re-entry into the JLP of former members of the National Democratic Movement (NDM).

The NDM was formed by current JLP leader Bruce Golding in 1995 after he left the JLP complaining that it was unwilling to engage his ideas for a new form of politics that was less divisive, more inclusive, more transparent and more accountable.

His departure was a major psychological blow for the JLP as it coincided with a rebellion by a dozen other senior JLP politicians, mostly from western Jamaica, who had accused Edward Seaga, the then JLP leader, of being autocratic.

But in September 2002, on the eve of general elections, Golding returned to the JLP, giving fillip to what was seen then as a flagging campaign.

Since then, other ex-JLP politicians who had followed Golding into the NDM have returned to the JLP.

Dabdoub, it appeared, had made up his mind to quit before yesterday’s meeting, as his resignation was typed and dated March 11. Yesterday, Samuda said that Dabdoub had always been “uncomfortable with what he called the disruption of his constituency”. According to Samuda, Dabdoub was never satisfied with the process of allowing a challenge.

“The seat will now be open to anyone who wants to apply,” Samuda said.