ON the stroke of 10:00 am yesterday, one supporter in the yard at Tarrant Baptist Church on Molynes Road shouted, “Him deh a Pre-Mix”, a mere stone’s throw by a strong man up the road. The reference was to the imminent arrival of Dr Peter Phillips.

The president of the People’s National Party (PNP) was at the church’s secondary entrance within two minutes, head popping atop a category two vehicle on any of Jamaica’s toll roads, while he surveyed all around him in the manner of a property owner, as Nomination Day activities got rolling.

By 10:07, Dr Phillips had shaken off the majority of those who accompanied him to the St Andrew East Central nomination centre, and started the short journey on his date with destiny. Around 10:22, it was all over… he became one of the first to be officially nominated, photographed, and congratulated by the constituency’s returning officer, Urel Williams, a teacher in his professional life.

Phillips had pumped himself up with the assistance of councillors Nenna Wilson (Hagley Park Division), and Dennis Gordon (Maxfield Division) in the Kingston & St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC), even as police inside the venue tried desperately to resist strong-arm tactics to get media workers away from the signing area.

Once qualified to run in the September 3 General Election in a seat that he has held since the by-election of 1994, Dr Phillips made it clear that he had no time to accommodate any suggestion of his party losing the next national poll.

“I am not contemplating loss,” he responded to a question from Television Jamaica‘s Entertainment Report producer Anthony Miller, about whether or not a party defeat would mark the end of his political career.

Insisting that he was healthy, took no medication, and felt fit and ready to go, following his revelation earlier this year that his doctors had diagnosed stage three colon cancer in his body, Dr Phillips also discounted the results of recent opinion polls which saw him and his party trailing the Jamaica Labour Party, and its leader, Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

“In the Caribbean pollsters have got it dreadfully wrong in the past few months,” the 70-year-old said.

He blamed low economic growth, and failure by the JLP Administration to tackle issues of violent crime, in particular murders, as obstacles dangling around the JLP’s neck that he believes will be the downfall of the party founded in 1943 by Sir Alexander Bustamante.

Phillips’ opponent, Jodian Myrie, turned up at the venue at 12:01 pm with far fewer supporters than Dr Phillips, many of them from the Cassia Park Division held by the JLP in the KSAMC.

After sorting out her documents and, like Dr Phillips, handing over her nomination fee of $15,000, the daughter of international reggae star Mark Myrie, best known as Buju Banton, who last unsuccessfully contested the Hagley Park Division for the JLP in the 2016 municipal election, set about trying to convince media personnel that the unthinkable could happen, and Dr Phillips could be sent packing from a constituency that he has all but turned into his own fiefdom.

“You want to call it a surprise you can, but we know exactly what will be happening on the day,” Myrie responded to a question about her scoring what would be the political upset of the last 100 years.

“I am far more confident, more experienced than I was in 2016,” she said, referring to the Local Government election contest that she lost to Wilson.

“If you win this election against Dr Peter Phillips,” another journalist began to ask Myrie, who interrupted swiftly: “Sorry, when I win this election…”

Some turned away, opting not to ask any more questions, one even mumbling, “She confident eeh?”, to which another muttered “A arrogant she arrogant.”

One man even left the venue suggesting that Myrie go over the lyrics of her father’s hit song Not An Easy Road.