MouNtainside, St Elizabeth – Donald Buchanan, the outgoing member of parliament for South West St Elizabeth may be retiring from representational politics, but according to Chris Tufton the upcoming election in the constituency will be about Buchanan’s stewardship or lack of it.

At a divisional meeting in Mountainside on Sunday, Tufton, the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidate for SW St Elizabeth, focused attention on Buchanan who has represented the constituency on behalf of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) for the past 18 years.

In the process, Tufton, an opposition senator who polls suggest currently has a big lead in the constituency, discounted the challenge of the Rev Stanley Redwood who will be the PNP’s candidate in the parliamentary elections which are constitutionally due by November.

“This election is not about the little man running round the place say him is reverend,” Tufton told a large crowd of cheering supporters at the Mountainside Primary School.

“This election. is about Donald Buchanan’s stewardship over the last 18 years. He has been a failure from the start to the finish and he is worried that we are going to expose him.,” said Tufton.

Striking a consistently humorous note, Tufton urged Buchanan, who is the general secretary of the PNP and the minister of information in the Portia Simpson Miller-led government, to come out of “hiding”, withdraw his decision to retire from competitive politics and frontally defend his status as MP.

“Buchanan, why you nuh jus’ put the little man whe a run round like a headless chicken aside and put yuh name pon di ballot?” Tufton declared to thunderous applause. He led the crowd in song: “Buchanan at Jamaica House, hiding, hiding, hiding, Buchanan at Jamaica House hiding, hiding from Tufton. Buchanan, where art thou.?”

Even while insisting that he would not get into “name calling” or stoop to “gutter politics”, Tufton found time to respond to the characterisation of him as ‘Satan’ by PNP representatives in the constituency.

“I am not Satan, everybody knows that, I go to church, I worship my God like everybody else and ask Him for guidance. What I am prepared to admit is that I am giving him (Buchanan) nightmares, night after night, after night. I am prepared to accept that I am his demon and I will continue right up to the wire.,” declared Tufton.

And even as he spoke of the need for “steps to deal with the tribal approach to politics” and to tone down “the rhetoric that is going to heat up the political temperature and lead to misguided action”, Tufton threw his own verbal barbs.

“I know better, Buchanan doesn’t, he represents the past, he is redundant,” said Tufton. “Every time I see this gentleman on TV, speaking on behalf of his government, I wonder if he is not a plant by alien forces to undermine (his own party) .

“When I see this man dress up inna him gabardine kareeba suit, I wonder . and when I listen to what he says, and how he says it, I say ‘but wait, every time Buchanan go on TV to represent the PNP, they lose a hundred votes.'”