MANDEVILLE, Manchester – Opposition Leader Bruce Golding says he expects Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to call parliamentary elections before Christmas this year.

“Do not allow yourselves to be deceived or deluded into believing that because of Trafigura the elections will be put off until sometime next year,” Golding told an auditorium packed with opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) workers and hardcore supporters at the Manchester High School late Sunday night.

“Don’t be surprised and I confidently expect that when I deliver my Christmas message this year I will be doing so from Jamaica House as Prime Minister of Jamaica,” Golding added to tumultuous applause.

The opposition leader was in Mandeville for the constituency conference of Central Manchester JLP caretaker Sally Porteous, who is to challenge the ruling People’s National Party’s (PNP’s) Vando Palmer in the upcoming elections. The seat is being vacated by the PNP’s John Junor, who will retire from representational politics come the parliamentary elections which are constitutionally due next year.

Such was the magnitude of Simpson Miller’s popularity when she took over leadership of the PNP and the government in late March following the retirement of her predecessor P J Patterson that it was widely expected that she would go to the polls this year.

However, a number of setbacks, not least among them the Trafigura scandal involving the PNP’s acceptance of a $31 million ‘gift’ from the Dutch oil trader Trafigura, which has a contractual arrangement with the Jamaican government to collect and re-sell Nigerian oil, have triggered a rethink for many analysts.

The delay – sometimes made worse by open quarrels and fractiousness – in finalising candidates for a number of constituencies has also been a source of great concern for the PNP. The ruling party is still to finally determine candidates for about 10 seats in the 60-seat House of Representatives.

But it is the Trafigura affair which was first made public by Golding earlier this month that has provided the biggest headache for the Simpson Miller administration. The impact has been such that the man at the centre of the ‘gift’ arrangement, Colin Campbell, was forced to resign as Information Minister and PNP General Secretary. As a result, some analysts have been anticipating that the Prime Minister would delay going to the polls until after the ICC Cricket World Cup in March and April, thereby giving her party time to repair the damage.

But according to Golding, elections were now likely before year-end because “there is a view that is now gaining greater currency within the government and within the People’s National Party that the longer you wait the worse it is going to be and there is a view that is being expressed with . persuasive authority that you better call it quick before it gets worse”.

As a result, he said, he was passing on the message to his party organisation that if there was anything left that needed to be done before the elections, it should be done “quickly”.

A confident Golding declared that he was “looking forward to these elections” because of a sense he had picked up on the campaign trail of “an anxiety, a hope, an impatience, a yearning for a government that has the kind of vision that is inclusive, that creates space for everybody, that point people forward”.

The mission for the JLP, he said, was not just to win the election and take political power, but to build a revolution that would change forever, the way politics is conducted and the way government is run.

He claimed that the Memorandum of Under-standing (MOU) on the basis of which he returned to the PNP in 2002 after leaving in the ’90s to form the National Democratic Movement (NDM) was “alive and well”.

Among the changes that would be implemented should the JLP take power would be a fixed election date and a special prosecutor to investigate fraud and corruption involving public and elected officials, he said. In the same way petty thieves were sent to jail, so too should highly placed officials when found guilty of robbing the public purse, Golding said.

He repeated that a government run by him would find $500 million annually to make high school education tuition-free for all and $1.6 billion would be found to abolish user fees in the public health system. Money would also be budgeted to ensure the maintenance of infrastructure in each of the 60 constituencies.

Building on a theme that was carried by speakers before him, Golding claimed Simpson Miller had lost control of the government. In fact, he said, there were members of the government who were “not even talking to each other”.

He claimed that Simpson Miller had “nobody to blame but herself” after failing to take proper control of the reins. He suggested that the prime minister had been dreaming of taking on the top job for 20 years, but now that she had it, she did not know what to do.