PEOPLE’S National Party (PNP) campaign director for the November 28 Local Government Elections, Noel Arscott, says the Opposition party is banking on Government’s “failed promises” to secure its 10th parish council election win.

The party has won nine of the last 15 elections, including a clean sweep of the 2012 elections where it secured all 13 parish councils and the Portmore Municipal Council.

“The councillors and councillor candidates have been put on notice for some time now and we expect them now to ramp up the activities at the community level, to meet with their constituents and certainly to point out the atrocities and the promises that the Government made prior to the general election of February 25,” Arscott told journalists yesterday at a press conference at the party’s headquarters in St Andrew.

According to him, the lives of Jamaicans have become “harder” because of these “failed promises” of the Jamaica Labour Party Administration

“…They’re being called to pay and to contribute to a scheme that many of them will not benefit from — the $18,000 that has been promised. And a number of things that the Government promised, when they were in Opposition [have not been delivered]. The question of crime, the question of the dollar and the value of the dollar, which continues to be devalued daily [have not been addressed]. We expect every one of our candidates to hit the road to remind the Jamaican people that they were tricked into voting for the Jamaica Labour Party on February 25 and we need to correct that situation,” Arscott said.

At the same time, PNP President Portia Simpson Miller, in a news release yesterday, said that the party is moving to “defend and retain” leadership of all the parish councils.

She said: “I am calling upon the PNP councillor/candidates, campaign managers, cluster managers, PD captains, outdoor agents, indoor agents and runners to go out and tell the people about the work of the PNP and its history with local government. We have a strong message and we must tell the people because we are always with the people and for the people.”

Mayor of Kingston Senator Angela Brown Burke, who also spoke at the press conference, said that it is because of the PNP why people are beginning to look at parish councils through “positive spectacles”.

“…For the last four years we have spent a lot of time building relationships, speaking with people, talking with people [at] our town hall and sector meetings so that the decisions made respond to the needs of the sector and the individuals who we serve.

“We have been doing that; people have been seeing it and we have been touching lives; we have brought new leadership, new management to the local authorities, and so I believe also that is one of the prongs on which we will carry a message in this campaign,” said Brown Burke.

In the meantime, general secretary of the party, Paul Burke, disclosed that the party intends to scale down its presence in both print and electronic media, when he was asked about its resources.

“We are always in need of additional resources. We are doing our fund-raising, [and] we will be able to carry out a programme for the People’s National Party for the upcoming elections. Most of our resources will be spent on the ground, not in on air and not on [print] advertisements, but to do the groundwork, the critical organising work. So you might not hear us or see us as much as our political opponents on national television or radio. But I can tell you we’ll be on the ground working and we’ll be outdoing them on the ground as we have been doing,” Burke said.