JAMAICA Labour Party (JLP) leaders Sunday night hammered the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) for what speaker after speaker claimed was the party’s poor stewardship of the country’s affairs, which has led to widespread corruption and the plundering of Jamaica’s resources.

“Jamaica has been worse off under the PNP during the last 17 years, and the time has come for them to be voted out,” speakers told the thousands of labourites who crammed into Munimar Square, Spanish Town for the final leg of a five-day tour of the island’s coastal parishes.

When party leader Bruce Golding took to the stage just after 9:30 pm, he told the meeting that “the JLP will build a new Jamaica”, and taking a leaf from former Prime Minister P J Patterson, who in the last elections likened the election to a horse race, said it was time for PNP president Portia Simpson Miller to ‘fly de gate’.

“.Whether yuh fly de gate next month or next year, we ready.,” Golding said to loud shouts of “shower” from whistle-blowing, flag-waving supporters.

Golding, repeating the message of corruption and mismanagement, said the $300 billion debt resulting from the financial sector meltdown in the 1990s could have been used to pay nurses, teachers, and policemen and women, all of whom are battling with government for better wages.

The JLP leader also pointed to the Operation PRIDE and the furniture scandals of the early 1990s as corruption which had stymied government’s ability to pay professionals.

Golding, at the rally held in his former Central St Catherine constituency, promised residents of the parish that should the JLP get state power at the next elections, the party would immediately design a development plan to take place along the Spanish Town to May Pen corridor.

In the meantime, he urged residents of Spanish Town to stop the violence, telling them that “investment does not do well where there is violence”.

Spanish Town has over the years been wracked by violence, mainly from clashes over turf from the notorious One Order gang, affiliated to the JLP, and Clansman gang, which supports the ruling PNP.

Meanwhile, JLP spokesman on finance Audley Shaw told the large gathering of labourites that a JLP government would pursue and imprison those who have presided over corruption.

Shaw, acclaimed for exposing massive government corruption, said the billions squandered from the government could send children to school and pay the nurses.

It was a message also carried by chairman Dr Ken Baugh, who told the crowd that government’s arrogance over the handling of the Portmore toll issue had turned that section of St Catherine into “labourite country”.

The parish of St Catherine has voted in favour of the ruling party in the last three elections.

MP Olivia “Babsy” Grange, the Member of Parliament for St Catherine Central, and Mayor of Kingston Desmond McKenzie joined their party leader in urging the government to call early elections.

“Anytime the PNP president want to call de election he can call it. Anytime it call, de results will be de same. The JLP will form the next government. And, aside from Sir Donald Sangster, she (Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller) will be the shortest serving prime minister of Jamaica,” the mayor said to wild scenes of cheers and shouts of ‘shower’.