Don’t blame us for your by-election date fiasco, PNP says
KINGSTON, Jamaica — The People’s National Party (PNP) is rubbishing the explanation given by Prime Minister Andrew Holness through the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Matthew Samuda for the changes of the nomination and by-election dates for East Portland.
A new Member of Parliament is to be elected in the constituency on April 4, instead of March 25 as was first announced, to fill the vacancy created by the death of Dr Lynvale Bloomfield last month.
According to the PNP, the failure of the prime minister to “face the Jamaican people and speak truthfully on the issue, of which he alone has ultimate control, is a demonstration of cowardice and the entire sorry episode is yet another example of the government’s refusal to abide by the rule of law”.
The PNP, in a statement today, argued that once again the Holness government has to walk back from a position which ignores and tramples on the Jamaican Constitution.
The PNP said that the usual disruption of schools for nominations and elections activities could have been avoided had the government taken into account the fact that March 8 would have been a mid-term break for many institutions.
“Some schools in the constituency will be affected on the new dates for Nomination and the by-election. This double disruption could have been avoided had the prime minister taken the interests of the people of East Portland into consideration and given timely notice of the initial Nomination date,” the PNP said in its statement.
The PNP also slammed as “silly” the explanation given by Samuda in a radio interview, which they say attempted to use the scheduled Budget Debate presentation of the PNP president Dr Peter Phillips as an excuse for the date change. “This must be dismissed as nothing more than a further example of duplicity on the part of the Prime Minister and his surrogates,” the PNP said in its statement.
“The matter of calling a by-election, the PNP said, did not need to be so disorganised, jumbled and disorderly, as is the case with the undertaking of the road work, to disrupt the daily lives of road users, business persons and stakeholders and especially our children”.
