Bruce Golding yesterday put his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) on what Labourites termed an election watch and chided himself for talking too soon about the Trafigura affair which, he suggested, forced the Government to postpone general elections he believed were planned for last December.

“There was speculation last year that the elections might have been held in December,” Golding told his party’s Area Council 1 meeting at Kingston College’s North Street campus. “The fact that they were not held in December, perhaps we have nobody to blame but ourselves. If, to use the words of Alston Stewart, I had shut my damn mouth and said nothing about Trafigura, the elections probably would have been held already.”

According to Golding, he was putting a leash on himself, “cause right now I’m putting together information about Trafigura 2. But in order to ensure that they don’t put off the elections until October, for the time being, I’m going to shut mi damn mouth.”

Talk in political circles is that Golding has more damaging information on the Trafigura affair which last year brought down Cabinet minister Colin Campbell.

The revelation last October that the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) accepted $31 million from the Dutch oil trader, Trafigura, which had a contract to sell Nigerian crude for Jamaica, threw the PNP and the Government into turmoil and Campbell also resigned as general-secretary of the PNP.

The PNP had said that the money was a donation for electioneering, but Trafigura later claimed that it was payment on a commercial arrangement. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller ordered the money returned, but last week Campbell’s Cabinet replacement, Information Minister Donald Buchanan, admitted that the prime minister’s order has not yet been carried out.

Yesterday, Golding told his party to prepare and await the announcement of general elections, which are constitutionally due this year.

“.I want every constituency, within the next two weeks, to meet with all of their election day workers, to sensitise them as to the work they have to do, to give them the sense of urgency that they need to have at this time, to finalise whatever you have not yet finished that should have been finished,” he said.

“I want every indoor and outdoor agent, every runner, transport supervisor, every cluster supervisor must be sensitised over the next two weeks as to the responsibilities that they have to carry out.”

He also reiterated the Opposition’s position that the election date should be fixed.

“When the next elections after this one are to be held, nobody will have to speculate, nobody will have to guess, nobody will be able to sit in any room to consider and to strategise,” he said. “I hope that by that time we would have secured a constitutional amendment to fix the election date so that ‘no baddy’, nobody can mess with it after that.,” he added to cheers.

He said he was committed to constitutional provisions for a fixed election date because it was not good for a country or democracy that one person had the right to determine when something so fundamental would be held.