MEMBERS of the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) on Wednesday night threatened to pull their candidates from the first national political debate, which was broadcast live from the Arnold Road studios of the Creative Production and Training Centre (CPTC) in Kingston.

Seconds into the first break of the debate – which focused on social issues such as health, education, employment and crime – a host of displeased members of both parties, who were watching the televised debate in a separate room, stormed into the studio to register their dissatisfaction. Some were heard saying, “Him not going back up there”.

The brief standoff was caused by a promotion inviting viewers of CVM TV to vote for the better debater by texting their answers to the station. It appeared on screen during the first segment of the debate and was shown while Dr Ken Baugh (JLP) and Dr Peter Phillips (PNP) were speaking.

“We had an agreement as part of the debate team that there should be no text voting during the debate,” said the PNP’s Colin Campbell, who represents his party on the Jamaica Debates Commission (JDC). “The debate [is aired in] paid-for time and therefore advertisers are the only people who would be allowed to display. It was absolutely against the rules.”

Campbell added: “[We were willing to stop the debate] until we had a guarantee that the rules would be applied.”

Olivia Grange, the JLP representative on the Commission, agreed with Campbell.

“We negotiated certain agreements with the debate team through the Debates Commission (but) that [text voting promo] was not what we agreed on,” she said.

Yesterday, CVM’s programmes manager, Keith Campbell, told the Observer that the airing of the promo was nothing more than a mishap.

“It should not have happened. It should not have been aired,” he said. “It was a mistake (because) that poll is exclusive to Your Candidates (a programme aired on Tuesday and Saturday nights at 9:00).”

Campbell said that when officials from the Debates Commission called on Wednesday night, the station immediately withdrew the text voting feature. CVM, he said, has since apologised to the parties involved.

However, JDC commissioner Brian Schmidt, who said he had not seen the promotion and was unaware of the details, told the Observer that the JDC’s rules did not outlaw text voting by individual stations.

“There’s no rule preventing text voting because if the station wants to run their own promotion, they can do their promotion. There’s nothing in our rules that state, as the Debates Commission, that a media house cannot run a promotion of any sort,” said Schmidt, who is also marketing manager of Irie FM and ZIP 103 FM.

Despite that glitch, the JDC commissioner expressed pleasure with the running of the debate, singling out the production teams and moderator Dervan Malcolm who he said kept tight control of the proceedings.

Party representatives on both sides were also pleased with the running of the debate in general and with the performance of their respective candidates.

The second of the three debates will take place tonight between the JLP’s Audley Shaw and Dr Omar Davies of the PNP. They will discuss issues affecting the economy and finance.

The big showdown is set for tomorrow night when Bruce Golding, leader of the JLP, takes on Portia Simpson Miller, prime minister and president of the PNP.