MANDEVILLE, Manchester — The leadership of the ruling People’s National Party’s (PNP) Region Five (St Elizabeth and Manchester) yesterday formally introduced all eight candidates for the next general election to executive members of the region.

Those introduced by Region Five chairman Mikael Phillips included Hugh Buchanan, member of Parliament for St Elizabeth South Western who narrowly held off an internal challenge last month and Evon Redman who has displaced sitting MP for St Elizabeth North Eastern, Raymond Pryce as the party’s standard-bearer in that constituency.

The other PNP candidates for St Elizabeth are Member of Parliament for St Elizabeth South Eastern Richard Parchment and Daren Powell who is seeking to snatch St Elizabeth North Western from JC Hutchinson, the only Opposition Jamaica Labour Party MP in that parish.

Powell, a former West Indies cricketer, is now parish councillor for the Malvern Division in St Elizabeth South Eastern.

In Manchester, Phillips, the MP for Manchester North Western and Peter Bunting national security minister and MP for Manchester Central lead the way.

The other candidates are: Michael Stewart who has taken the baton as PNP standard-bearer for Manchester Southern from Michael Peart, member of parliament and speaker of the House of Repesentatives; and Val Wint, who is again challenging the formidable JLP MP and former Finance Minister Audley Shaw for the Manchester North Eastern seat, after falling short in December 2011.

Come the next election, Peart will retire from active politics having served Manchester Southern as MP since 1993. A Parliamentary election is not constitutionally due for another year. However, it is widely anticipated that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller will send Jamaicans to the polls before Christmas.

At yesterday’s Regional Executive Council (REC) meeting at the McIntosh Primary School in Royal Flat, several speakers including Phillips and PNP deputy general secretary, Senator Wensworth Skeffery reminded comrades that unity was crucial ahead of the election.

The reminder came against the backdrop of ugly divisions in St Elizabeth North Eastern and St Elizabeth South Western relating to the displacement of Pryce by Redman and the challenge to Buchanan by former banker, Ewan Stephenson.

Only recently, Pryce’s constituency office in Santa Cruz was damaged by fire believed to be the work of arsonists. A police probe is ongoing.

Phillips told the Jamaica Observer following yesterday’s meeting that the PNP leadership had taken steps to resolve the issues and he was confident there would be party unity in both constituencies ahead of the election.

— Garfield Myers