JAMAICA Labour Party (JLP) leader, Bruce Golding, has criticised the prime minister’s comments that she has drawn a line in terms of how her party will deal with political violence and intimidation during the current campaign.

“Well, my God, if we are to unite the country, if we are to move forward as one nation, my job is to erase every line that is drawn,” Golding told a JLP mass rally in the Naggo Head bus park, Portmore, last Friday night.

Golding was responding to comments made by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller at a PNP rally in Lucea last Thursday, that she would no longer talk peace with the JLP unless the church or the political ombudsman mediated.

He called on JLP supporters to “be cool” in the face of a number of murders in which, he said, his supporters were victims, and announced plans to intensify cooperation with the police as well as the party’s support for the families of those who have been killed and injured.

“We are structuring our campaign to avoid confrontation. I can’t give you any guarantee as I stand here this evening, I can’t give you any guarantee that I won’t have more labourites to bury. What I will say to you is, we are going to conduct this election peacefully and we look forward under God to that glorious celebration on the morning of August 28th,” Golding told the cheering crowd.

“We have structured a path that will take us to victory and we are not going to allow anything, we are not going to allow any intimidation, any provocation, we are not even going to allow murder to take us off that path,” the JLP leader said.

“Come the 28th of August, I and the team that I lead, we have a country that has to be built and I can’t build a country if that country is virtually at civil war. The government that I lead is going to be a government of all Jamaicans, therefore, we can’t start of by drawing any line,” he added.

Referring to the reasons given by Simpson Miller for refusing to meet directly with the JLP, Golding said that his worry was not about people waving green bush or putting up orange flags.

“Is not green bush is my worry. My worry is not putting up of orange flags, anywhere. I stop worrying about those things. My worry is how many more people are going to die before we get to the 27th of August,” he said.

“When the election date was announced and I expressed concern. When I asked the question, why must we go through seven weeks of this, people thought it was because I was tired and burnt out. It is because I didn’t want to have to bury too many Sanjey Banks and too many Howard Archers, that’s why I was concerned.” Golding referred to the deaths of JLP activists in South East St Andrew and East Rural St Andrew over the past week.

“Yet, I have to say to you, be cool, because trust, truth and justice can never drown. You can submerge it under water, but it is going to rise,” he said

The meeting was in support of the party’s candidate for South St. Catherine, Dr Errol Williamson.