MONTEGO BAY, St James – Three of four vice-presidential slots are up for grabs in the ruling PNP and on Thursday five names emerged as likely candidates – two of them from within the politically strategic western Jamaica region.

Derrick Kellier and Dr Wykeham McNeil have both said they have been asked to run, which in political circles is often code for persons planning to seek election but who aren’t ready to make their intentions public.

Kellier told the Sunday Observer Thursday that he has been asked by supporters from different parishes to take a shot at the position, but said he won’t make a decision until the end of July when he consults with his South St James constituency executive.

But, personally: “I am open to serve,” he said, when pressed. “I have a vast amount of experience and I am willing to give service to my party in whatever capacity I can.”

McNeil, 48, was even more vague.

“I am being urged, and everywhere I go I hear people talking about it, but I have not given it any serious thought,” he said.

The Sunday Observer, up to late Friday, was unable to reach health minister Horace Dalley, tourism minister Aloun Assamba and parish councillor Angela Brown-Burke, whose names have also surfaced, to confirm their interest.

The elections are in three months at the People’s National Party conference in September.

A clear vacancy for VP was created in February when Portia Simpson Miller was elected party president. Incumbent VP Dr Peter Phillips is expected to seek re-election, but Dr Paul Robertson and Dr Karl Blythe have indicated they will not.

Kellier, a veteran politician and chair of the PNP Region VI, will be taking his first shot at such a high position in the party, if he decides to run, despite holding influential positions in government.

Party insiders say he is likely to succeed in his bid, and if he does, McNeil would replace him as chair of Region VI.

McNeil confirmed Friday that he was also approached with regards to the regional chairmanship as well as the VP race.

Regional chairs are elected at the regional executive council level annually in August.

“In terms of a regional position, as it stands now, a lot of persons have been calling me and have approached me about both – regional chairman and vice-president,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“To be honest with you, in terms of my personal position, it is early days yet.”

Kellier has served as a junior minister of security, one-time head of the Montego Bay-based Western Office of the Prime Minister, deputy leader of the House, and was appointed to the Cabinet in March as labour minister, crowning his political career.

McNeil, a junior minister of tourism and MP for Western Westmoreland, has family ties to politics – his father was Ken McNeil, a former government minister of health.

The younger McNeil was named senator in 1995, and is a two term MP having won his seat in 1997 and 2002.

Interest in the vice-presidencies was re-ignited last week when Blythe finally went public with his intentions to quit representational politics, an announcement that was expected, his having emerged the least favoured of four contenders in the PNP presidential polls and not making the cut for the Cabinet.

The region had previously lost its most influential member in the party hierarchy when former prime minister and PNP president PJ Patterson went into retirement, quitting his East Westmoreland seat in the process.

Senator Noel Monteith, who was a key organiser for Patterson, said it was important that the region retain “some” of its leadership of the party, saying a vice-president would have the clout to mobilise party supporters for the general election.

The party lost significant ground in western Jamaica during the 2002 general elections, losing five of the 11 parliamentary seats it had won in the 1997 polls across the parishes of Trelawny, St James, Hanover and Westmoreland.

In 2003, the party also lost control of three of four parish councils in the local government polls.

PNP general secretary Senator Colin Campbell would not comment on the names that have emerged a likely contenders for VP.

“. We will have a vote even if it is by acclamation, that is, if by the time of conference there are only three names, it will be vote by acclamation,” said Campbell.

“If there are more than three we will have a run off,” he said Thursday, not factoring Phillips’ post.

Kellier has brushed aside suggestions that leaving the decision about his candidacy to the end of July would present too narrow a window to campaign, saying he expected that party members urging him to run would be out working on the ground, in the meantime, to shore up his support base.

Reported by Mark Cummings and Erica Virtue