JOAN Gordon-Webley, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) caretaker for South East St Andrew, yesterday claimed that she was caught in the crossfire of a bitter feud for the constituency between perceived communist and moderate wings of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) and fingered Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller for this week’s flare-up of violence in the Mountain View area of the capital.

“She is the one that has spurred Mountain View into the situation you see there now. I lay the blame squarely at her feet,” charged Gordon-Webley, pointing out that before the prime minister’s address at last Sunday’s PNP annual conference, the area was calm.

Mountain View Avenue, an area known for its frequent flare-ups of violence, has been, for most of the past two years, relatively quiet, with only sporadic outbursts of gang violence.

However, on Sunday night political violence flared anew in the community after the conference where Simpson Miller accused the Opposition JLP of actions that could incite violence in Mountain View, and proclaimed that she was not prepared to return to the “gutter politics” of the 1970s and ’80s, a time of major political turmoil in Jamaica.

“She is irresponsible,” fumed Gordon-Webley, who has been campaigning in the area for the JLP since May this year.

On Monday, the police and the Jamaica Defence Force had to be called into the area after several hours of sporadic gunfire had residents and people travelling through the community cowering in terror. One motorist driving along the main road was shot in the hand, and a 16-year-old youth was shot by police late Monday night.

Despite the increased police presence, the guns continued to bark, and even as late as Wednesday evening traffic along the main road had to be diverted as rival gunmen continued to trade bullets.

Yesterday, in an interview that will be carried in its entirety in this Sunday’s Observer, Gordon-Webley, who during the 1980s was the JLP member of parliament for East Rural St Andrew and in the 1990s served one term as a JLP senator, gave her theory for the most recent flare-up.

She claimed that the upsurge in violence is a deliberate attempt by some PNP factions to destabilise the community in order to further their own political aims.

“There is a great set-up coming on, and essentially, I am being caught in the crossfire,” Gordon-Webley insisted. In the last election, she said, many would-be JLP supporters were chased out of the JLP-dominated Jacques Road area by the violence, and were only now returning to the area. It was in the PNP’s interest, she said, to perpetuate the violence so that those areas remained empty of JLP supporters.

“Let’s face it, we are politicians, and we follow the enumeration trends. People have started to enumerate in Jacques Road. They’ve been coming back, starting to live. That is not in the best interests of the communists,” thundered the diminutive politician.

‘The Communists’, Gordon-Webley explained, were PNP vice-presidential aspirant Paul Burke and his wife Angela Brown-Burke. On Saturday, Brown-Burke succeeded where her husband had failed, and won her bid to become one of the PNP’s four vice-presidents. Paul Burke has a long-time association with the Mountain View area, and in the past has participated in Peace Management Initiative attempts to diffuse political tension in the area.

His wife sits in the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation as the councillor for the Norman Gardens Division. That division, which is located in the Phillip Paulwell-represented constituency of East Kingston and Port Royal, borders South East St Andrew, and encompasses several of the PNP areas that Gordon-Webley claims are the sources of the gunfire.

Gordon-Webley claimed that Paul Burke, who supported Simpson Miller in her quest to become president of the PNP earlier this year, was engaged in a fierce bid to unseat the sitting PNP member of parliament, Maxine Henry-Wilson, who supported Simpson Miller’s biggest rival in the PNP presidential race, Dr Peter Phillips.

“What I understand is that Maxine is on her way out and someone else is on their way in,” said Gordon-Webley. “The person that is tipped to take over the constituency, the PNP having realised that Maxine has run amok, is no other than Mrs Paul Burke.”

The Burkes, she claimed, have both financial and on-the-ground clout, and had a vested interest in keeping the constituency in the hands of the PNP.