KINGSTON, Jamaica — OBSERVER ONLINE has learnt that Santa Cruz businessman Evon Redman is being put forward as the People’s National Party’s standard bearer for the St Elizabeth North Eastern (NE) seat for the next parliamentary election.

The next election is due by December 2016, but it is widely speculated that it will be held before the end of this year.

The decision came after the party’s St Elizabeth NE organisation was thrown into political turmoil following repeated delays in the holding of a delegates’ selection following a challenge to sitting MP Raymond Pryce by Redman for leadership of the constituency.

The latest delay in the selection process emerged last week when Pryce supporters, led by former Mayor of Black River Daphne Holmes, successfully applied for a court injunction to block it.

They complained that Redman, who is a former constituency chairman with links to the constituency organisation going back over 40 years, was ineligible since he was not a paid-up member of the PNP.

This angered the party’s leadership and triggered an executive meeting late Monday following which a consensus was reached for Pryce to step down.

A statement was subsequently released by the party late last night on behalf of Pryce, indicating that he has withdrawn himself as a candidate for the next general election.

OBSERVER ONLINE has since learnt that Redman was being put forward as the candidate following a meeting earlier today.

The constituency is routinely considered one of the safest for the PNP in rural Jamaica.

Pryce defeated the Jamaica Labour Party’s Corris Samuels by more than 4,000 votes in the parliamentary elections of December, 2011, though he was placed in the constituency on the recommendation of party president and prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, just a few weeks prior.