MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Insisting that Peoples National Party (PNP) President Dr Peter Phillips is his friend and that his decision to launch a leadership challenge is not “personal”, Manchester Central Member of Parliament (MP) Peter Bunting wants his supporters to show “love and respect” to all during the internal campaign.

“This is not a personal issue, I consider Dr Phillips my friend…,” Bunting told Comrades during the Knockpatrick Divisional Conference at the May Day High School on Sunday night.

He told his supporters that earlier that evening he along with Phillips and former prime minister and party president Portia Simpson Miller had attended MP Richard Azan’s birthday party in Clarendon.

He said he and Phillips had sat together and “cut cake together… there is no hostility, no animus towards anybody…”

“I am insisting that everyone who support me treat Comrades with love and respect… and anyone who cannot observe that, if you call yourself my supporter I am going to denounce you…,” he said.

The priority, said Bunting, was to make the PNP stronger in order to take political power whenever parliamentary elections are called.

“At the end of the day, come September we must all rise united to go forward for victory in the next general election,” Bunting said.

Garfield Myers