The political demise of Dr Peter Phillips

Dr Peter Phillips said it before a majority of ballots were cast on election day – he would quit as People’s National Party (PNP) president, Opposition leader, and ultimately Member of Parliament, if his party lost.

He has made the initial move of allowing that to become reality – offering his resignation to the chairman of the PNP, Fitz Jackson.

But it did not have to come to this for a man who has served this country as a wonderful public official. His services at the various ministries since the 1990s have been tremendous. But he had one fault… at least as far as a majority of the Jamaican people are concerned – he lacks charisma – a much needed tonic when one is going out there to face the electorate to serve ultimately as prime minister.

It was always there to see. Whether you believe in polls or not, they were always saying that. The presidential challenge (2008) to Portia Simpson ended up as an ill-timed move. That by Peter Bunting a year ago only served to expose to the country how much Phillips was not accepted by the majority, though the delegates of the PNP insisted that the people must have Phillips, like it or not.

I heard Phillip Paulwell and others mention that the same leadership race last year contributed to the PNP’s loss to the JLP. Nonsense! Had it not been for that leadership contest which energised a sleeping organisation, the party would have won only two seats – St Andrew Southern, and St Andrew South Western. It had fallen flat.

Now, Dr Phillips has gone down as the first man in history to have led the PNP not to have become prime minister, premier or chief minister. Sad! He still remains the finest minister of finance that I have seen. How he handled himself, especially with the International Monetary Fund between 2012 and 2016 was remarkable.

Unfortunately for him, he was not the man that the people wanted. And so, he must ride away into the wilderness, thinking about what could have happened. But he was 12 years too late.

Sadly too, due to the public perception of him, other candidates suffered. This should serve as a lesson to the PNP that it should never take the people for granted.

Julian Robinson should resign too

There are many who believe that when it comes to the general secretary of the People’s National Party, I have an axe to grind. Not so!

And it might be easy to say ‘I told you so’, in respect of the performance of the gentleman, but that’s the easy way out. Robinson is the worst general secretary that the PNP has seen.

The signals were there that the party was not expanding…it was depending too much on the hands of yesteryear to use the same approach that has been in place since 1972. Membership had been slowing, and the heavy dependence on the oldsters was not working.

The selection of candidates, though in some cases is the prerogative of the president, falls in the lap of the general secretary. For those of you following elections since the 1970s, look at the PNP’s list of candidates and tell me if this is not the worst you have ever seen.

When a party can insist on running a man (Patrick Roberts) in five-straight elections, in a seat that the party won three times before his untimely entry, it smacks of a clear insult of the Jamaican people.

And there are more Patrick Roberts’s around, though some may come a bit more refined. Candidates like Rohan Banks, Venesha Phillips, Val Wint, Keith Brown, Victor Wright, Raymond Pryce, Donald Jackson, among others, should never have been put up by the PNP.

It was not solely their fault that they got the battering which came their way though, as they were also set back by then perception of the party president.

But the PNP has to get rid of Robinson as its general secretary if it is to breathe. What we see happening now is children of original PNP stalwarts going over to join the JLP, which they see as a viable alternative, and a way out of poverty.

These same children would have seen their parents, aunts and uncles, grandmother and grandfather working their hearts out for the PNP, yet got nothing as their reward… whether it was a piece of land, house…nothing. They have grown wiser.

Why the JLP won so handsomely

All the indicators pointed to a Jamaica Labour Party victory in last Thursday’s election. I had figured that the party would have been difficult to beat in 35 seats, but never imagined that 49 seats would have landed in its lap.

I hardly even think that the JLP itself thought that it would have won so many seats, although Dr Andrew Wheatley had predicted to me that the Labour party would have taken 42 seats.

I must confess that I assessed the situation in western Jamaica wrong. Although I had seen evidence that Homer Davis would have been hard to beat in St James South, and he was, there was little indication that the PNP would have lost Westmoreland Eastern, and Western, or even Central, since former MP Dr Karl Blythe had joined the campaign team of struggling Dwayne Vaz in the latter seat.

Hanover, too, I suggest, was not a parish that I had on my list to go to the JLP. Victor Wright in Trelawny Northern, despite the boundary cut, was destined to lose, more so because of his performance in the sugar housing controversy.

It was shocking to see Peter Bunting and Dr Fenton Ferguson go down, but I had heard long ago that Horace Dalley, Imani Duncan Price, and Michael Stewart were in trouble. The failure of Duncan Price’s sister, Patricia Duncan Sutherland, to face the electorate in the March by-election, affected her efforts in Clarendon South Eastern. And the efforts to choke Independent candidate Derek Lambert, a former PNP candidate, in the same by-election, backfired.

In all, it was an excellent campaign spearheaded by Babsy Grange, Dr Andrew Wheatley, Juliet Holness and others that has put the PNP to shame.

Come with the best Cabinet, PM

It is my hope that Prime Minister Holness will name the best Cabinet possible, and not simply reward some of those who won seats, including veterans.

Neither should the PM feel constrained by those wishing for 13 or 14 ministries. If the country requires even 25, so be it.

One of the things I would love to see is the abolition of the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, which really didn’t make sense in the first place.

The prime minister would be urged to also consider his wife, Juliet, for the Cabinet, no matter what others might say. She is highly competent and will serve this country well.

This is what I believe the Cabinet should look like:

Prime Minister – Andrew Holness

Attorney General – Senator Ransford Braham

Finance, Planning & the Public Service – Dr Nigel Clarke

Public Safety & the Security Forces – Senator Matthew Samuda

Agriculture & Fisheries – Floyd Green

Commerce, Industry & Investments – Dr Chris Tufton

Water, Housing, Land & Roads – Juliet Holness

Information, Culture (to include entertainment), Gender, Sport – Olivia, “Babsy” Grange

Science, Technology, & the Digital Economy – Senator Kamina Johnson Smith

Mining, Energy, Climate Change & Transport – Robert Montague

Inner-city Development — Desmond McKenzie

Education and training – Pearnel Charles Jr

Tourism and Global Marketing – Ed Bartlett

Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade – Fayval Williams

Health & the Environment – Dr Horace Chang

Local Government and Community Upliftment – Dr Andrew Wheatley

Consumer Protection and Labour – Senator Kavan Gayle

Justice & Fairplay – Zavia Mayne

Speaker of the House of Representatives (non-Cabinet) Marisa Dalrymple Philibert