WHILE the National Democratic Movement, founded in 1995 by the now prime minister, Bruce Golding, was a poor performer in the 2007 general elections, the victories of its former members have featured significantly in the triumph of the Golding-led Jamaica Labour Party after 18 years in Opposition.

The Earl DeLisser-led NDM and its 11 candidates fared poorly in the 2007 general elections, only managing to harvest a combined 540 votes out of the more than 800,000 polled in the national elections on September 3.

When Golding left the Jamaica Labour Party to form the National Democratic Movement in 1995, he was joined by several members of the labour party, including Christopher Tufton, Gregory Mair, Daryl Vaz, Russell Hammond, Michael Stern, Dennis Meadows, Timothy Scarlett and Joan Gordon-Webley.

In 2001 when Golding left the party to return to the Jamaica Labour Party, they were also to follow.

In the September 3 general elections, five of the eight named above, including Golding, beat their People’s National Party rivals by comfortable margins.

Golding who challenged the PNP’s Bunny Witter for the West Kingston seat emerged with 10,202 votes to Witter’s 1,653; Tufton trumped the PNP’s Stanley Redwood by 9,977 to 8,062 votes for the South West St Elizabeth seat, while Vaz beat the PNP’s Abe Dabdoub by 6,969 votes to 6,066 for the Portland Western seat.

Meantime, the JLP’s Stern unseated the PNP’s Richard Azan with 7,586 votes over 6,992 for the Clarendon North Western seat while Mair beat the PNP’s Phyllis Mitchell 5,996 votes to 5,134 for the St Catherine North East seat.

Businessman Wayne Chen, who was among the ranks of the NDM and Golding’s finance spokesman at the time, told the Observer that the outcome of the polls had nullified questions about the credibility of the candidates, especially Golding’s.

“What it speaks to is the calibre of people; it speaks to their commitment to on the ground work and organisation.

“Mr Golding formed a party to carry forward his principles because they were not finding favor within the labour party, when the labour party agreed to a memorandum of understanding he returned to the party, based on the same principles. Nothing was compromised,” Chen said.

He added that some persons may have forgotten that Golding and his JLP counterparts had not been the only ones to form the NDM, but noted that several members of the PNP had also gone to that party, some of whom contested seats on the JLP’s ticket.

Importantly, Chen said, four of the six new seats picked up by the JLP in the September 3 general elections were won by ex-NDM candidates – Gregory Mair, Christopher Tufton, Michael Stern and Daryl Vaz.

Said Chen: “It was no surprise to me, though it was a surprise to some of the commentators, that Michael Stern beat Richard Azan, who was Portia Simpson’s campaign director in her presidential bid. He spent a significant amount of money in his constituency and still lost by 600 votes in North West Clarendon.”

According to Chen, to the credit of the NDM, many features of the party’s manifesto found their way both into the JLP and PNP 2007 manifestos.

“No matter what they say about the NDM, it was a very significant influence on policy-making in this country.

“Because a lot of the policies were very attractive, both parties incorporated NDM policies into their manifestos to the point where if you were to compare the JLP and PNP manifestos today they are not much different from each other, but importantly they are not much different from the NDM manifesto,” Chen said.

According to Chen, while the manifestos were ‘deficient’ in the area of fundamental “particularly the PNP’s”, they have adopted a lot of the more pragmatic approaches that was part of the NDM manifesto.