NEWLY elected People’s National Party (PNP) standard-bearer for St Andrew South Western Senator Angela Brown Burke has admitted that efforts to rebuild the fractured constituency after weeks of intense and sometimes bitter campaigning will not be easy.

Burke, who defeated Councillor Audrey Smith Facey in Sunday’s run-off, said while there has been contention in the PNP garrison following former Member of Parliament Portia Simpson Miller’s decision to back her, a mountain has been created out of a molehill. Smith Facey is the councillor for the Payne Land Division, one of three in the constituency, while Brown Burke is the councillor for the Norman Gardens Division in Kingston Eastern.

“The constituency has not been cut in the way that many are trying to make it seem. In the Payne Land Division they had a councillor in the race and so they feel that their candidate should be the candidate and anyone going up against that candidate would be an issue at that time. But I’ve been going around and I have been talking to them as well, and I have been saying ‘Listen, you have a choice and you have made that choice’,” the PNP vice-president told the Jamaica Observer.

“We are both Comrades, and at the end of the day Audrey and I are going to have to work together. At the end of the day some might take a little longer than others, but I believe that through the process of engagement and working together people will come to see that some of the vilification, some of the demonisation that took place that that is just in other people’s head and that that is not the reality. The Angela Brown Burke that people try to paint is only a figment of their imagination,” she added.

Responding to claims of a greater divide in the party since she showed interest in the safe seat, Brown Burke said her focus was on a clean campaign which, she said, was about peace, love and blessing.

“… I have tried to send that message to all of the individuals who supported me. I can’t tell what’s going to happen for the individuals who have a future political ambition and who have invested much in this particular race,” she said. “All I have to say is that South West St Andrew really has to be about the people of South West St Andrew and that is what we have to focus on.”

Meanwhile, she poured cold water on suggestions that her entrance into the constituency was the first step in her bid to becoming party president.

“Persons have told me not to say it (no) because I might sound like I don’t have any ambition, but I really have none. I have none because where I am today I really have one major goal, and the major goal is to become the best member of parliament in Jamaica and that goal is to make sure that at the end of the day South West St Andrew is safe,” said Brown Burke.