MONTEGO BAY, St James — PEOPLE’S National Party (PNP) General Secretary Peter Bunting has blamed poor leadership in St James as the main contributing factor for the party’s poor performance in recent elections in the parish.

“I think that part of the reasons that we have only one seat in St James is one that we have to take responsibility for, and it is a failure of the leadership,” Bunting acknowledged.

“And when I say failure of the leadership, I am not talking about candidates and the member of Parliament alone, although we have to share that responsibility,” he explained.

Bunting was addressing a group of mostly young professionals during a meeting hosted by the St James PNP Outreach Committee held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Rose Hall last week.

Arguing that the party will only be able to win the upcoming general election on “people power” as they will not be able to match the opposing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) with cash, Bunting charged each young professional to adopt a polling division in St James to ensure the party a clean sweep in the parish.

“When I look out in this audience here tonight (last Thursday) — and I estimate there are at least 500 professional people here tonight — and if I were to challenge each person here to adopt one polling division in St James and they accepted that challenge, I feel certain that we will take back every single constituency in St James”.

During the 2007 general election the PNP were only able to eke out a win in the South St James constituency, where Derrick Kellier narrowly defeated Noel Donaldson, the JLP contender.

The three other seats were all won by JLP candidates — Edmund Bartlett in East Central St James; Clive Mullings in West Central St James and Dr Horace Chang in North West St James.

And in the subsequent local government polls held in December of 2007, the Opposition PNP won four of the 17 parish council divisions in the parish.

Political analyst Shalman Scott believes that the failure of the PNP’s public relations and organisational machinery and the absence of insufficient political contact by the local political representatives with the people have contributed to the party’s decline in support in the parish.

The change of leadership in the JLP in 2005, which resulted in that party becoming increasingly attractive to especially the middle class, as well as the PNP’s long tenure in office, Scott argued, have also affected the PNP’s fortunes in the St James.

He noted that the party’s slide in popularity had come despite the “impressive performance” by the administration between 1997 and 2007 when there were “significant improvement in social and physical infrastructure in the parish”.

In the 1997 general election the PNP had won all of the four parliamentary seats in St James.

But in the two national polls that followed, the JLP was victorious in three of the four constituencies.

In the upcoming general election the parties will be vying for five parliamentary seats, due to the creation of the Central St James constituency.