PORTIA Simpson Miller, obviously annoyed by a suggestion that she has not taken decisive action to stem swirling disputes among Comrades, on Sunday told her constituents that there are no dons in her People’s National Party (PNP).

“We have one leader, and we have some deputy leaders, but we don’t have no don in the People’s National Party,” Simpson Miller said at her St Andrew South Western constituency conference.

“The People’s National Party… is a democratic organisation,” Simpson Miller, the PNP president and Jamaican prime minister, insisted.

Simpson Miller was responding to this week’s Sunday Gleaner lead story in which two political analysts said that she needed to step in and quell disputes over who should contest the upcoming general elections on the party’s ticket in a number of constituencies.

Pointing to the headline accompanying the story which stated ‘Portia MIA’, Simpson Miller said the PNP adheres to a democratic process and denied that there were problems within the party.

“I hear they say I am missing in action; all who saying I am missing in action, why they never say the same thing when the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) had their problems?” Simpson Miller declared.

“I don’t have no problem in my party. I am the leader, and I lead from in front, not [from] behind,” she insisted, adding that whoever wrote the headline “need to go to the doctor tomorrow (Monday) and check their head whether it is okay or not”.

She said that where there is a challenge within the party, there are discussions before a decision is taken.

“Let me make it quite clear: The People’s National Party is not like the other party. We have a system where the officers of the party meet if there are difficulties and have discussions — not just the party leader behave like a dictator.”

Member of Parliament for St Elizabeth North Eastern Raymond Pryce, St Ann South Eastern MP Lisa Hanna, and St Andrew East Rural MP Damion Crawford are all facing challenges within their respective constituencies.

The PNP has so far postponed the selection contests in all three constituencies.

Just last week, MP for St Elizabeth South Western Hugh Buchanan defeated challenger Ewan Stephenson by 14 votes, while attorney-at-law Andrea Moore triumphed over Portland Eastern MP Dr Lynvale Bloomfield as the delegates’ pick to represent the PNP in the next general elections.