MEMBER of Parliament Natalie Neita-Headley wants legislation that prohibits parliamentarians from switching parties before completion of their term.

“… If you are going to change parties you have to wait until your term ends because you shouldn’t be switching in the middle of a term,” Neita-Headley — the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) MP for East Central St Catherine — told party supporters at a mass rally in Waterford, Portmore, St Catherine on Wednesday night.

Neita-Headley, in reference to Sharon Hay Webster, the former PNP MP who has crossed the floor to join the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), said elected representatives also have a responsibility to first inform the constituents who elected them of their intention before doing so. This, she said, was critical as electors vote base on their conviction of the principles and policies of a party. “So if you decide to change you have to go back to talk to the people,” she said.

And speaking about last week’s stand-off in the Lauriston Division in St Catherine where persons refused to participate in a 4-H Club cook-off if Hay Webster was a part of it, Neita Headley said “when you go in a community you represented in orange clothes and then you later present yourself in green clothes you need to talk to the people first”.

Neita-Headley told charged-up comrades that “nobody can’t tell me nutten or sell me nutten to change me from being PNP.”

At the same time, Denise Daley, who replaced Hay Webster as the PNP’s standard bearer in the constituency, and who had promised to give her a political backsiding during a rally in Yallahs, stayed clear of any such utterances this time around.

Instead she urged the prime minister to call the election.

“I am here to deliver the message that if the JLP think them bad call the election,” she said.

She urged supporters to turn out in their numbers to cast their votes on election day and not to stay home because they do not like a candidate.

“I don’t want any comrade to stay home because dem no like that person or this person, you must like PNP,” she said.

At the same time, she accused the Government of rushing to call an early election because of looming job cuts.

Opposition Leader Portia Simpson, meanwhile, told comrades that the cream of the team is with the PNP despite moves by the JLP to recruit former PNP members.

“… I don’t know why they are panicking and trying to move around to recruit some PNP people but we are not worried because if they get anyone from the PNP its not the cream of the crop,” she said. “We have the best team and we present the best choice because for us its about putting people first and not political expediency,” she said

The party leaders reeled off a list of the PNP’s achievements in its 18 years, while noting that the same cannot be said of the JLP

The meeting provided the platform for the party to present its parliamentary candidates for the St Catherine constituencies in Region Four, following a bus tour in the Portmore Municipality on Wednesday.

Returning candidates are Colin Fagan and Fitz Jackson, Natalie Neita-Headley, Robert Pickersgill, while newcomers are Arnoldo Brown, Denise Daley, Anthony Ebanks and Vincent Morrison.

Seemingly impressed with the number of persons the party had mobilised to participate in the tour and attend the mass rally, the candidates for Portmore — Jackson, Fagan and Brown — all expressed confidence that the PNP will remain the dominant party in the municipality.

Jackson said he has given the undertaking that all three seats from Portmore will be held by the PNP. “The task ahead of us is about our future and our children’s future,” he told comrades.

His colleague MP Colin Fagan also expressed confidence that all the constituencies in the municipality will be PNP, and said the three-man team will be unstoppable. “With us three we will make Portmore like you have never seen it before,” he said.