OUTSPOKEN People’s National Party (PNP) councillor Venesha Phillips has blamed her party for deliberately destroying the self-worth and pride of Jamaicans and using them as pawns in a game.

The Papine councillor made the charge on Sunday during a ‘reasoning session’ at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston where members of the organisation were asked to express their views about the party as the organisation seeks to reposition itself and move on from its recent loss in the February 25 General Election.

Comrades who attended the inaugural forum, dubbed ‘Comrades Grassroot Reasoning’, were asked to answer two questions: ‘The PNP, who are and what are we’? and ‘Have we been true to our cause’?

Phillips, in her answer to the latter question, claimed that the PNP has not been true to its cause.

“We have not really been true to the cause because self-worth and pride have been gutted from our people and deliberately so.

“Our people today are not recipients of empowerment but instead they have become pawns used in the games by those who wish to create the PNP that they want to exist in,” she said.

Phillips claimed that the party has used money to control and manipulate the people.

“… So Comrades, we have moved away from when Michael Manley (former party leader and prime minister) gave us that sense of purpose that we are not for sale, and today we are for sale because today every man have them price.”

Phillips charged that money has been used to manipulate the people because they have not been able to afford some basic items.

“… Instead of empowering them… we use money as a weapon and we have brought our people to their knees just so we can establish our own cause,” said Phillips.

She added: “We have not been true to the cause because we have allowed those who would want to break our people so that they can exalt themselves, we have allowed them that space to do it.”

She, however, urged members of her party to reclaim their dignity and pride.

“Don’t sell your dignity to anybody when the ‘Septembers of this world’ shall appear; it’s not just labourites we going to tell to tek dem money and nyam them out and vote dem out, but it will happen in September, too, because the people understand what is going on … they are no longer in the dark,” Phillips said.

Her comment was an apparent reference to the PNP’s annual conference in September and likely challenges to the leadership of the party.

The councillor also told the gathering that there were a number of individuals within the party who wanted to create a cause that they want others to live by and to fight for. “We must reject that, we must reject every attempt,” she stated, but did not name the individuals.

Instead, she said the PNP should look at expanding on the “cause that is already there” in a way that ensures that it remains relevant.

“What we need to do is look within the cause that has been tried and laid down and see how it will expand, how all the things that we are doing today will basically build out the framework and foundation that has been laid out from the 1960s and 1970s, that is what we really ought to have been doing”, Phillips said.

“We have not been true to the cause, but I think today is a step in the right direction where we will return to core business and the cause will be reaffirmed,” she added.

“We are resocialising the comrades on the ground, we are reaching them, we are restoring their pride and we are urging them to ensure that even when you broke, a poor and boasy yuh say,” said Phillips.