People’s National Party (PNP) president P J Patterson will today make the first step in his retirement from active politics when he hands over the leadership of the 68-year-old party to Portia Simpson Miller at a meeting of the party’s National Executive Council (NEC) at the Sunset Jamaica Grande Resort in Ocho Rios.

The NEC, the PNP’s highest decision-making body outside of the party’s annual conference, will officially sanction her election that came on February 25 at the end of a fractious campaign in which delegates of the party seemed to have voted their conscience.

The transition will formally open another chapter in Jamaica’s history, as Simpson Miller will become the first woman president of the party that, for five decades was led by the Manley dynasty – co-founder Norman Manley and later his son Michael, her mentor while he lived.

Simpson Miller, the popular minister of local government, community development and sport, won the presidency in the internal party poll, bagging more votes than her rivals Peter Philllips, Omar Davies and Karl Blythe.

At today’s NEC meeting, Simpson Miller is expected to pay tribute to Patterson, who has led the party since 1992 and under whose leadership the PNP has secured a historic four consecutive terms in office.

Prior to that, the island’s two major political parties – the ruling PNP and the Oppositon Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) — had taken consecutive 10-year turns as government since Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944.

“She will also speak about the critical issues facing the party, such as unity and the political tasks such as enumeration for elections,” an aide told the Sunday Observer yesterday.

Political pundits will be watching for any signal from Simpson Miller as to whether she will put the party on election watch, in keeping with a widely held view that she will call early elections when she becoms prime minister, to take advantage of her popularity and the national goodwill that has greeted her historic election.

After today’s hand-over, Simpson Miller will next take the national spotlight on Thursday when she will be sworn-in as Jamaica’s first ever woman prime minister in a ceremony at King’s House, the official residence of the head of state, Governor-General Professor Kenneth Hall, in Kingston.

On Friday, she is expected to name her Cabinet.

Three Caribbean PMs confirmed for Portia’s swearing-in

Liberia’s Sirleaf can’t make it

by Pete Sankey

National News Editor

Portia Simpson Miller’s vaunted pulling power will be put to the test at tomorrow’s unveiling of the list of dignitaries who will be in Jamaica for her swearing-in next Thursday as the nation’s seventh and first woman prime minister.

Three Caribbean prime ministers and a Congressional delegation from the United States are already confirmed to attend and unconfirmed news reports have named two other history-making women leaders – Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet – among Simpson Miller’s guests for the elaborate ceremony being planned by a broad-based committee.

However, Sunday Observer sources said Liberia’s Sirleaf had indicated she could not make the ceremony but had sent fraternal wishes.

The event planning committee met in Kingston Thursday afternoon to polish up final plans for the swearing at King’s House and a senior member who spoke on condition of anonymity said last night three Caribbean leaders had confirmed their attendance up to Friday afternoon.

They are:

. Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur;

. Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Patrick Manning; and

. Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves

Members of the US Congressional delegation were not named.

The committee member said other leaders, some of them prominent figures on the world stage, were expected to confirm their attendance by tomorrow, when plans for the swearing ceremony will be outlined at a press conference in Kingston.

The swearing-in will be the first major assignment for the country’s new governor-general, Professor Kenneth Hall, who replaced Sir Howard Cooke on February 15.

The 60-year-old Simpson Miller, the local government, community development and sport minister, on February 25 beat off a challenge from two of her Cabinet colleagues – Peter Phillips, the national security minister, and Omar Davies, finance and planning minister – and former water minister Karl Blythe, to grab the presidency of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP), after more than a year of intense, sometimes bitter campaigning.

Simpson Miller will officially replace the outgoing prime minister, P J Patterson, as party president at a meeting of the PNP’s National Executive Council in Ocho Rios, St Ann today.

She first ran for the presidency of the PNP in March 1992 when the ailing Michael Manley retired from politics, but lost to Patterson, despite her huge popularity nationally.

However, supported by a battery of advisors and a strong campaign team, she ran a sophisticated and spirited campaign, creating history as the first woman to lead the PNP, which was founded in 1938 and which has, up to now, only had three leaders – Norman Manley, his son Michael, and Patterson.

Simpson Miller, the MP for the South West St Andrew constituency, large tracts of which are crime-ridden slums teeming with the urban poor, is expected to be at her desk by Friday morning, the same day she will name her Cabinet.

She has, however, already indicated that she intends to spend time making unannounced visits to communities across the island, as her way of connecting with the people.

The charismatic Simpson Miller, who is married to businessman Errald Miller, former head of Cable and Wireless’ Caribbean operations, first entered representational politics in the early 1970s as a councillor in the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation.

She went on to contest and win the South West St Andrew seat in the 1976 general election and retained it solidly even in 1980, the year the PNP was booted from power in a landslide by Edward Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party.

The PNP did not contest the snap elections of December 1983, but Simpson Miller returned to Parliament in February 1989 when the PNP was called back to power under Michael Manley by the Jamaican electorate. She has not lost the seat since.

Born to a rural family at Wood Hall in St Catherine, Simpson Miller has served as minister of labour, welfare and sport, and was instrumental in developing a new Overseas Recruitment Centre for farm and hotel workers; created a National Insurance Fund to take over from the former National Insurance Scheme and, by a better investment portfolio, greatly increased the value of the fund enabling regular increases in pension benefits.

She also established a chair in labour studies at the University of the West Indies; presided over a long period of harmonious relations between employers, workers and trade unions and established the National Council for the Aged. She won respect for her work as labour minister in the halls of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

As minister of tourism and sport, Simpson Miller was instrumental in getting flight services resumed by Martin Air and Continental Airlines, supervised the completion of the Tourism Master Plan and piloted new marketing thrusts into Europe. She also presided over the return to normality in the tourism industry following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D C.

In her current post as minister of local government, community development and sport, Simpson Miller’s credits include providing economic support and opportunities for athletes and their support systems in communities, including those who are injured; establishing a sports medicine and treatment facility for injured athletes; and undertaking several international assignments for the Organisation of American States (OAS), providing high level representation to the Inter-American Network on Decentralisation, Local Government and Citizen Participation.

The prime-minister designate also served as vice-president of her party since 1978, and as president of the PNP Women’s Movement since 1983.

From left: Owen Arthur, Patrick Manning, Ralph Gonsalves have all confirmed their attendance at Simpson Miller’s swearing-in ceremony set for this Thursday.