IF there is one politician in this country who knows the usefulness of bowing out before the political stale bread gets mouldy, that man is former Prime Minister PJ Patterson.

There are many who believe that it was PJ who encouraged Omar Davies to compete in the 2006 PNP presidential race.

Having absolutely no hope of winning, Davies’ 300 votes became the split-off of votes which carried the day for Portia Simpson Miller and denied Peter Phillips the win, even if we factored in the view that Karl Blythe’s votes could have been utilised as leverage to his or someone else’s advantage.

I have been informed that PJ Patterson has been very busy in recent times, and it is my suspicion that he, a PNP loyalist to the core, is sensing that the popularity of Simpson Miller is not the guarantee that it used to be in former years.

“Don’t quote me,” said a PNP insider to me a few weeks ago. “It is my understanding that PJ has got together his council of ex-ministers and they have been strategically deployed to monitor and macro-manage area councils.”

He went on: “What I find strange and telling is that about 10 constituency polls and one national poll have been conducted, and while I have no results of those polls, sources tell me that there is cause for concern.”

Conducting polls is expensive business, especially considering the state of our roads . We have not reached the level of development that telephone surveys can be considered reliable, and home phones have seen a severe contraction with the growth of mobile technology.

Ten constituency polls plus a national poll, at the cheapest, could cost about $5 million. Why would a political party in a poor country with a depressed economy deploy those resources at this time to polling when no election is in sight?

It would seem to me that maybe there is the sense that PM Portia Simpson Miller wants to pack it in, and PJ, ever the master planner, is looking to the PNP’s annual conference at year-end to make a crucial decision.

Voices in the PNP and those outside have been calling the name Phillip Paulwell for some time now.

If what some see as the inevitable taking place, and a special announcement is made later on in the year, we may see Phillip Paulwell taking the reins from Portia Simpson Miller, who would, as a precondition, announce her intention not to seek re-election.

Should that happen, it would present the PNP with a new energy and would send the lacklustre, boring, uninspiring leadership of Andrew Holness into hibernation for the next three years.

Certainly we have seen that our prime minister has slowed down and is giving the impression that her heart is no longer in the game, if indeed it was ever there in the first instance.

Over the next three years, the PNP Administration has to embark on the most intense policy planning that any Administration has ever faced in regards to getting the Logistics Hub towards the endgame. In this, leadership will be of paramount importance and I cannot see any other minister but Paulwell to lead this charge.

Not having all the facts at my disposal, I am going with the established reliability of my source. Still, it has all of the elements of speculation and I will have more as the weeks and months unfold.