ANNOTTO BAY, St Mary – Hundreds of People’s National Party (PNP) supporters Thursday night not onlybraved heavy and intermittent rains in this rural town, but stayed close to midnight to hear their president, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

The comrades, mainly from the party’s Region 2, which comprises the parishes of St Mary, St Thomas and Portland gathered at the town square from early afternoon for the meeting which should have started at 6:00 pm but which did not get underway until 8:39 pm when rally chairman Delano Franklyn went to the microphone.

By that time however, several hundred had left the venue as the rains would not let up. But hundreds more remained.

When the prime minister’s security signaled her arrival, party supporters, who were then in a festive mood after presentations from vice presidents Peter Phillips and Fenton Ferguson, general secretary Donald Buchanan and newly recruited comrade Abe Dabdoub, screamed as they warmly welcomed the woman they called “Mama and Sister P”.

Simpson Miller, who invokes the presence of God before she speaks at public functions,

went to the microphone at 11:21 pm, when the meeting should have been long completed.

After praising the ‘thousands of comrades’, she said she was heartened by their presence and applauded them for not taking people from outside the region to be part of the crowd.

Selling herself as ‘a leader you can trust’, Simpson Miller told her cheering supporters that

the opposition’s Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) education campaign slogan, which promised free education, had changed suddenly to free tuition.

Meanwhile, PNP general secretary Donald Buchanan once again raised the spectacle of “Satan” on the campaign trail, saying, “Satan and all, Reverend Stanley Redwood will be the next member of parliament for South East St Elizabeth”, again referring to the JLP’s Chris Tufton, who opinion polls said will take the seat.

Buchanan was scolded for the comments which were deemed in breach of Section 12 of the Political Code of Conduct.

Buchanan also said PNP candidate Paul Lyn would beat JLP spokesman on finance Audley Shaw, saying Shaw would be one of 12 JLP incumbent MPs who will not be in the House after the elections.