People’s National Party (PNP) General-Secretary Donald Buchanan has rubbished Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Bruce Golding’s claim that former PNP president Michael Manley refused to accept the title Most Honourable during his first tenure as prime minister in the 1970s but did so during his second stint as head of the Government after re-election in the 1989.

The People’s National Party flatly denies that Mr Manley had been offered the title of Most Honourable at any point during his tenure as prime minister of Jamaica,” Buchanan said in a letter to the Observer on Friday. “During the periods that Mr Manley served as prime minister, the protocol allowed only for the governor-general to be conferred with the title Most Honourable.”

Buchanan was responding to Golding’s claim made in an address to JLP supporters at a Generation 2000 (G2K) branch relaunch on the UTech campus in Papine, Kingston on February 22 and reported in the Daily Observer on February 23.

Golding had said he would not want the title ‘The Most Honourable’ affixed to his name were he to become prime minister. He said he supported the position of late former Prime Minister Manley who, he said, also refused to accept the title during his first stint as prime minister from 1972 to 1980. However, Manley eventually accepted the title when he returned to office in 1989, Golding claimed.

But Buchanan, charging that Golding had established a pattern of “seeking to mislead the public” pointed out that the JLP leader’s claim was historically impossible as Manley died three years before the decision was taken to confer the title on prime ministers.

“The title of Most Honourable being conferred on Prime Ministers past and present resulted from an amendment to the National Honours and Awards Amendment Act of 2002, which means that Mr Manley would have received the title posthumously, as he died on March 6, 1997,” Buchanan wrote.

“The PNP sees Mr Golding’s hallucinatory utterances as a continuation of his deliberately trying to smear others for political expediency and is again warning the Jamaican public to beware of Mr Golding’s apparent willingness to do anything to try to attain state power,” Buchanan added.

He said that Golding also tried to mislead JLP supporters at a meeting at the Jamaica Conference Centre on January 21 this year when he told them that the PNP was having a meeting in rural Jamaica at that very same time to test the ground for

an election.

“As we speak, as we are meeting here at the Conference Centre they are having a similar meeting at Dinthill Technical High School,” Buchanan said Golding was reported as saying. “The purpose of the meeting is, I understand, to get feedback from the ground as to how it stay, how wi look. And the blow-by-blow account that I have been getting as to what is happening at the meeting indicates that to me that some people want to go early and some people say we have to wait..”

However, Buchanan said the PNP did not have a meeting at Dinthill High School on January 21. “Not even a group meeting. The National Executive Council meeting of the PNP was held at Dinthill High School on January 28, 2007. One week after Mr Golding spoke.”

Added Buchanan: “Hallucinations can be dangerous, especially in someone seeking to lead this nation. He needs to have the voice(s) giving the blow by blow account silenced. The Jamaican public, for its part, needs to send Mr Golding the strongest possible response to his disturbing behaviour.