The People’s National Party (PNP) majority in Parliament is to be increased this week, as the National Executive Council (NEC) yesterday ratified the application of Abe Dabdoub, Member of Parliament for St Catherine North Eastern, Observer sources said.

The decision came at the NEC’s first meeting for 2007, held at the Dinthill Technical High School in St Catherine and paved the way for Dabdoub to become the party’s candidate in the Portland Western seat.

The party’s candidates and caretakers for national and municipal elections, in addition to regular NEC members in attendance, heard reports from a number of party officials. PNP president and prime minister, Portia Simpson-Miller was the keynote speaker.

Party chairman Robert Pickersgill would not confirm nor deny that Dabdoub’s application had been ratified, only saying, “I have to take instructions from the general secretary”.

Dabdoub was among three names being considered in the Portland constituency after the PNP was left without a representative when Doreen Campbell-Forbes resigned suddenly mid-last year.

Dabdoub, who won the St. Catherine North Eastern seat on a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) ticket in the 2002 general elections, has fallen out of grace with the JLP and sits as an independent candidate in the Lower House.

He finally quit the JLP in March of this year, after months of discomfort about the return of individuals from the National Democratic Movement (NDM) who left the party with then leader Bruce Golding.

His application is one of two high-profiled applications which were ratified by the PNP, the other being attorney-at-law Patrick Atkinson, who along with Dabdoub, were the lead attorneys for the JLP at the Commission of Inquiry into the 2001 West Kingston shootings.

Atkinson was also the JLP’s lead attorney against the 2005 Pearnel Charles injunction, which barred the party from holding its annual conference to elect a new leader.

The two other membership which were ratified are those of Leroy Gray, who ran on the JLP’s ticket against Dr Wykeham McNeil and Beverley Swaby, former JLP councillor/candidate in the Porus Division of South Manchester.