Lisa Hanna on Sunday stopped short of telling Portia Simpson Miller that it was time to step down, saying that the People’s National Party (PNP) president should be allowed time to set her own departure.

At the same time, Hanna pointed to a speech she said Norman Manley made more than 70 years ago in which he made it clear that, although he was the PNP leader, he was not trying to build the party upon himself, but upon the things that would live after he was dead.

“I believe, as some senior leaders of the party have said, ‘it is time to shake the tree’,” Hanna wrote in her chairman’s report to the party’s Region One Executive Committee meeting held at Ferncourt High School in St Ann.

“As we experience the dawn of a new political era in Jamaica we will have to win friends and influence people and we will have to present a vibrant face of the party. I am supportive to our party leader and believe that she should be allowed the time with her allies and family to determine her departure,” Hanna stated.

She reiterated that the party had not held internal vice-president elections in approximately eight years and said she thought it was important that the PNP kept its democratic traditions alive and vibrant.

Hanna said she was happy to see that her “friend and colleague” Wykeham McNeill had decided to run for a vice-presidental post, adding, “I would encourage more people to do the same and let the people decide.”.

She used the report to declare her intention to seek one of the party’s four vice-presidential posts, saying that she wanted to help build a party that was strong and resolute in including all classes, races, and educational backgrounds.

“I want to help build a party that is more accountable and transparent to the delegates and people of Jamaica and uses modern management principles,” Hanna said. “I want to build a party that practises a build up politics, rather than a ‘tear down, cut-throat, stab-you-in-the-back’ politics.”

Hanna has been very vocal about the need for change at the party’s second-tier leadership level since it narrowly lost the February 25 General Election to the Jamaica Labour Party.

In April this year, she moved a no-confidence motion against PNP General Secretary Paul Burke, saying that he represented a leadership style that the voters, and most members of the party, had rejected.

“Any objective job description of the general secretary would include creating a positive brand image of the PNP; efficient political organisation, motivation of the staff and Comrades at the secretariat, upholding the constitution and discipline within the party, and most importantly winning elections… I say without fear of contraction (sic) that he has mismanaged each and every one of these areas,” Hanna wrote at the time.

She also said that the PNP appeared to be a relic of the past, with obsolete messages, desperately trying to appeal to a generation whose sights are set on their future and that the party was disconnected by deep chasms of brutal internal conflicts and division.

In her report on Sunday, Hanna said that Norman Manley, one of the PNP’s co-founders and its first president, declared in a speech in Highgate, St Mary, in 1939, that the people of Jamaica should have leaders to take a leading part. What they wanted to learn was that it was not personalities which mattered but principles.

“What would Cde Norman Manley say if he looked at the PNP today?” Hanna asked. “I agree with Cde Norman Manley that we should never allow our personalities to trump principles, and leaders at all levels should make way for renewal and placing the party’s interest above their own.

“It is for this reason that after eight years I will not be offering myself for re-election as region chairman come this August. It has been my privilege and distinct honour to have served you all. I have learnt so much from my time in this position, but it is necessary to pass the baton. I served for ostensibly two terms and have led the region into two general elections and one parish council election. It is time, I believe, to allow others with talent to have the opportunity for leadership in the region. I am committed to the region and stand ready to provide support and guidance at all times,” she said.