Support for Atkinson, but…
MONTEGO BAY, St James — PEOPLE’S National Party (PNP) councillor for the Falmouth division Garth Wilkinson has pledged his support for incoming PNP candidate for North Trelawny Patrick Atkinson, even as he expressed disappointment at not getting the job.
“I am a party person; I will work with whoever they say… but my disappointment lies in the fact that on March 21 (this year) the party executive voted in favour of me to represent the constituency” Wilkinson told the Observer West.
He added that prior to that, he was interviewed by the party’s Regional, and National Selection panels, where he “excelled” at both interviews.
A poll conducted in the constituency, Wilkinson said, also showed that he was the popular choice to replace Member of Parliament, Dr Patrick Harris, who has indicated that he will be resigning from representational politics at the end of the parliamentary term.
On Tuesday, the PNP in a news release said the party’s executive has endorsed the recommendation of its candidates’ selection panel for Atkinson, a noted attorney, to be the party’s candidate for North Trelawny in the next general elections.
The release said that at an executive meeting on Monday, the party reaffirmed that it was the right of the party president to make the final determination on the matter of candidate selection.
The statement came five days after PNP supporters protested the decision to instal the 67-year-old attorney who contested and lost two general elections on the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP’s) ticket.
The placard-bearing demonstrators — a few burnt shirts bearing the image of Party President Portia Simpson Miller — said they would have preferred former PNP Youth Organisation president, Damion Crawford or Wilkinson, to be their political representative.
Yesterday Crawford expressed disappointment that party supporters in the constituency did not “have a say” in choosing their candidate.
“The party, however, has the right to make their decision. I can’t tell them who to choose; I can only offer myself,” said Crawford, who last month resigned as head of the PNPYO.
Excluding Atkinson, seven persons had applied to the party to replace Harris as the PNP’s standard bearer in North Trelawny.
When contacted yesterday for a comment, Atkinson said that he was “not ready to discuss the matter”.
Trelawny North is considered a PNP safe seat. The last time the party lost it in a general election was in 1980 when the JLP’s Keith Russell polled 8,986 votes to beat Desmond Leaky, who received 7,864 votes. The JLP also won the seat in 1962.
The PNP said in a news release on Tuesday that it has established an investigative team to probe last week’s protest by persons in the constituency.
“The investigative team will determine what occurred during the protest, who the protestors were, what were the causes of the protest, which person or persons were responsible for organising the activity, and whether any party rules were broken during the demonstration,” the release said.