MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) Member of Parliament for Manchester Central Peter Bunting and several others hammered away at the Petrojam scandal and other allegations of corruption at that constituency’s annual conference here on Sunday night.

Even as Bunting lashed the Andrew Holness-led Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government for alleged misdeeds involving huge sums, cronyism and other corrupt practices at the State-run oil refinery, he also said it served to emphasise “different standards in this country”.

Relying heavily on the vernacular, Bunting then reminded his audience at Manchester High School of an incident in 2011 when a man was jailed for three months after stealing ackee from the grounds of King’s House in Kingston.

“Yuh remember the last time the JLP was in power? [The courts] lock up a little man fi tief few pod a ackee…” Bunting said.

“Three months him get fi tief a few pod a ackee. Did we give the little man a chance fi bring back di ackee? No! Wi lock up him…,” the Manchester Central MP said to cheers and laughter.

Bunting, and his guestspeaker, shadow spokesman for finance Mark Golding —who is also MP for St Andrew Southern, MP for St Ann North Western Dayton Campbell, MP for Manchester Southern Michael Stewart, among others, claimed corruption was not confined to Petrojam.

They accused Prime Minister Holness of letting the country down, not just in his handling of the crisis at Petrojam by keeping former energy minister Andrew Wheatley in his Cabinet as minister of science and technology, but by repeatedly failing to act decisively to deal with what they said were other “scandals”.

Explaining recent actions by himself and other PNP parliamentarians in disobeying instructions from Speaker of the House of Representatives Pearnel Charles during a contentious debate about Petrojam, Bunting said that: “There comes a time when one has to be disobedient in defence of justice…

“Sometimes we have to draw inspiration from Rosa Parks (US civil rights activist in the 1950s and ’60s), Martin Luther King (martyred US civil rights leader), and [late Jamaican Prime Minister] Michael Manley when him lie down in the road [in defence of media workers]… we have to ensure that we help to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice…” Bunting said.

He argued that the reports and allegations of corruption were not a case of “just some rogues…

“When we see the entire JLP in Parliament rallying around, trying to protect or hide information about the ‘petroscam’ then we realise that it is not accidental. This is not a few rogue players, it is by design,” he alleged.

The Manchester Central MP claimed that what had been revealed so far about Petrojam was just “the tip of the iceberg”, with far more left to come.

Turning to his own party, Bunting said the PNP must hold to “core values of integrity. Party officers and elected representatives must always demonstrate integrity and strong moral principles”.

He said the PNP should be true to its ideal of “egalitarianism, with all Jamaicans considered equal, not just (the top) one per cent”. The party and its leaders had an “obligation to account for their stewardship”, accept responsibility and disclose results [of policies and programmes] in a transparent manner, he continued.

“That’s what the PNP is about,” he said.

Among those on the platform at the PNP conference in Mandeville was Rev Garnett Roper, president of the Jamaica Theological Seminary. Roper raised eyebrows by rising to speak, hailing Bunting as a man “for whom principle is a way of life”. Bunting, he said, should receive the full support of comrades as he pushes to expose wrongdoing.

Roper told comrades that the situation at Petrojam and other allegations of corruption elsewhere represented the State revenue being “siphoned off” for a “war chest”.

He told his audience that their MP was among those with ability to “see things” more clearly than the average person, and to “articulate” the issues.