BLACK RIVER, St Elizabeth – Just when is it okay to refer to your political opponent as ‘Satan’?

General secretary of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) and Minister of Information, Donald Buchanan believes he knows the answer.

“When someone stands before a large crowd of Labourites and call on them to put their X squarely beside the head, that person is the equivalent of Satan,” a smiling Donald Buchanan told the Observer on Saturday night.

Buchanan’s comment came at the end of the South-West St Elizabeth Black River PNP Divisional Conference at the Lower Works Community and Family Centre in New Town, Black River.

His name was never called but Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidate for South-West St Elizabeth, Christopher Tufton, was the obvious target as speakers including Buchanan, the sitting MP for the constituency and Rev Stanley Redwood, the PNP candidate, repeatedly referred to “Satan”.

In one of the more celebrated gaffes on a Jamaican platform, Tufton in an obvious slip of the tongue told thousands of JLP supporters at Sam Sharpe Square in Montego Bay on the eve of the 2002 election to put their X “beside the head”. A depiction of the human head is the PNP’s voting symbol. The symbol for the JLP is the bell.

In a light-hearted and humorous, yet stirring, presentation to a room full of PNP hardcore supporters – mostly party workers – Redwood, who took on the candidacy for the PNP late last year, said he had been told “Comrades” in the constituency were having trouble with Satan.

He was now in a position to say “Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus,” Redwood declared to laughter and applause. In Christianity, Satan (the devil) personifies evil and is the enemy of the Christian God.

Buchanan would later declare that “Satan gwine melt like butter against sun when Comrade Redwood hit the road.” Elections are constitutionally due by November but the PNP, which has held unbroken political power since 1989, has consistently said it is yet to “hit the road”.

The ‘Satan’ comment follows hard on the heels of controversy over a reference to Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller as “Jezebel” by the JLP’s candidate for South-Eastern St Andrew, Joan Gordon Webley. Urged to do so by Buchanan, JLP chairman Karl Samuda promptly apologised for the ‘jezebel’ remark on behalf of his party when both were shown a video clip of the incident while being interviewed on TV. A major concern then was that Gordon-Webley may have been in breach of the political code of conduct agreed by the two political parties.

Apparently pressured by her party Gordon Webley later withdrew the remark.

Yesterday, Buchanan argued that the ‘Satan’ reference was not in breach of the code of conduct.

When contacted, Tufton, an Opposition senator, insisted that he was not bothered by being called “Satan” by his political opponents, though he noted that “in the strictest sense it could be interpreted as a breach”.

He insisted however that: “I am not bothered by it. Buchanan has no credibility. He has been such a disaster (as member of parliament) that nobody takes him seriously. What I say is let the games (election) begin. I’ll be waiting for him at the finish line”.

Recent polls have shown Tufton with a big lead over Redwood in a seat which has been held unbroken by Buchanan and the PNP since 1989 – albeit by relatively small margins.

At Saturday’s divisional meeting, a number of speakers including PNP vice-president and Junior Minister for Water Fenton Ferguson urged party workers to “organise, organise, organise” and to “get into the trenches” to get PNP voters out on election day in order to secure the seat.

Redwood triggered tumultuous laughter and applause by passing on what he said was a message from his wife “that the worst type of pain is labour pain”. He was supported, he claimed, by a high quality group of party workers. If everyone did their job, he was confident “labour pains” would be avoided, he said.