Junction, St Elizabeth – Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has urged followers of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) to show “respect” to the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the build-up to parliamentary elections later this year as part of the effort to keep the campaign peaceful and clean.

“I am warning everybody, be respectful to the opponent, be respectful to the leader of the opposition when the JLP is campaigning,” Simpson Miller told a large crowd of cheering supporters during a political rally in Junction, South-East St Elizabeth on Thursday night.

It was Simpson Miller’s first political rally of 2007 and the biggest public rally for PNP candidate Norman Horne since he controversially replaced sitting MP Len Blake late last year as the party’s representative for the constituency in the upcoming elections.

“I am saying to PNP supporters, the JLP must be allowed to campaign in their own way, in peace. If they provoke you, move away or report it immediately to the police,” said Simpson Miller. “I cannot be careless. I am the prime minister of Jamaica. I have a responsibility for everybody, including the leader of the opposition.”

However, she was critical of the JLP and its leader, Bruce Golding, for what she alleged was their inappropriate response when JLP supporters, dressed in party colours and waving party flags, took to the streets during a recent visit by her to North-East Manchester.

To ringing applause, Simpson Miller declared that “I do not believe in war and fighting.. I love, I love, I love, I love. I am a peaceful woman, and this woman no want no bangarang..”

The prime minister made a spirited appeal for Jamaicans to “unite and give support to the security forces and deal” with crime “once and for all”.

She appeared to suggest that the police were at times too open in revealing anti-crime plans.

“From time-to-time members of the security forces will come out and they will talk about their plans in terms of curbing crime and violence,” the prime minister said. “I think the time of talking is over. And I think we need not say to the criminals exactly how we are going to deal with them.”

In an apparent reference to the recent Trafigura scandal which rocked the Government late last year, Simpson Miller warned PNP supporters to expect to hear more “manufactured scandals” because “some people believe they can only get political support through manufactured scandals.”

Her party, she said, was prepared to “open up the books and the accounts” to public scrutiny. She challenged the Opposition to do likewise”.

She stressed that she would not “go into the gutter with anybody” and she would also keep the PNP out of “gutter” politics.

“Leaders must stay above that kind of politics,” she said.