Immediate past president of the People’s National Party (PNP), P J Patterson yesterday pinned all hopes of the party winning the next general elections on current leader, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Taking his cue apparently from the recent Stone Polls showing Simpson Miller way ahead of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Bruce Golding, but the two parties almost neck and neck, Patterson declared: “I say that not only is she the best hope of victory, she is the only hope of victory, and we must unite around her.”

The former prime minister was addressing hundreds of wildly cheering delegates who transformed the National Arena in Kingston into a sea of orange for yesterday’s private session of the PNP’s 68th annual conference.

Hoping to rally the party faithful, Patterson also warned that “things no look pretty” in some constituencies he had reviewed with campaign director Dr Paul Robertson, and suggested that some current candidates would have to be replaced in order to win those constituencies.

He also reminded the crowd that the campaign for the presidency of the party was over in February and there was now a need to unite around Simpson Miller.

His reference was obviously to lingering claims that the deep divisions opened in the party during the presidential elections had stubbornly refused to heal.

Some PNP sources believe the first woman leader had sidelined key figures who did not support her campaign, while some stalwarts had withdrawn their support, waiting for her to self-destruct.

One senior PNP source said Simpson Miller and her staunchest rival, Dr Peter Phillips, the national security minister and second in the presidential race, had not had a one-on-one meeting since the February elections.

But although acknowledging that during the heat of the presidential campaign earlier this year “some harsh things were said and some hard feelings were developed”, Patterson insisted that the former presidential candidates had already made up and were working together, and he called for all comrades to leave the conference as one.

“The party has spoken. The people have spoken. There is one leader and one team and one party. And anything that I can do to help Sister P to be a healer of the breach, I will not hesitate to do,” he said.

“…We call ourselves comrades for a reason, we are brothers and sisters together in one party… When this party was being founded, we made it clear, that irrespective of the colour of your skin, you were welcome. We cannot make colour of shirt divide people in the People’s National Party today. We are one party,” Patterson insisted.

Indicating how deep the fissure was, Patterson disclosed that he would become involved in the party’s grassroots organisation for the next general election, “because, whether they like me or they don’t like me, they know that when it comes to campaign, I am not the don, I am not the professor, I am the dean”.

“I am not going to be in any motorcade, but when it comes to sitting down with them (the campaign team) at the centre, I shall be there to share my experience, and there are some constituencies, you going see me there,” he added.

Speaking just before Simpson Miller gave her charge to the delegates, Patterson continued to stress the need for unity within the ranks to fight the general election.

“The only plot in which we must be involved is to rewrite the pages of political history, that we not only give her and the party a fifth term, but we give her a mandate of her own and a first term in her own right,” he said.

He also called on the comrades to protect Simpson Miller from attacks from outside the party.

“When I was leader, you allow people to batter batter me and nobody come to my defence. Don’t allow enemies of the party and of progress to batter batter her. Come to her defence,” Patterson urged.

He suggested that some tough decisions would have to be taken in terms of the candidates representing the party in the next general election, because the party could win the popular vote and lose the majority of seats as in 1949.

“I have been looking at things in some constituencies. (I) Sat down with Paul (Robertson) Thursday morning and in some of the constituencies things no look pretty. Things no look pretty. And all those who want to be confirmed as candidates, from now until she sound the trumpet, walk, live, sleep, work in your constituency to bring your constituency home,” he cautioned.

“I have passed over the baton to her as leader of the NEC, we have seen her sworn into office in King’s House; soon she will have to be saddled to enter the starting gates and I am willing to serve even as a groom…” Patterson closed, placing an orange-coloured PNP cap, a symbolic crown, on Simpson Miller’s head.

Patterson, who was named a lifetime officer of the party at the conference, reminded the crowd of his decision to remain in Jamaica after his retirement, but declared that he did not wish to live under any government “other than one of the People’s National Party”.