PEOPLE’S National Party (PNP) maverick Paul Burke yesterday launched a blistering criticism of his party, saying the president and national officers “must take full responsibility for their indecisive, if not cowardly non-action”.

In the wake of last Thursday’s general election mauling by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Burke, a former general secretary, painted a picture of the PNP as broke, divided, lacking in discipline and direction, and outspent by a “grossly cash-rich JLP” 20 to one.

“Our canvassing was poor, or incomplete in too many cases. Efforts were made to monitor and improve enumeration of party supporters, but this obviously was not enough. Persons openly breached party discipline and there have been no sanctions, not even a reprimand,” he said in the latest edition of his SundaySun e-newspaper published by Sunshine Media Group.

“The PNP Secretariat was always limited with resources and personnel. Added with the level of undisciplined members, inclusive of our parliamentary group, the party was always handicapped with our internal issues and contradictions. Of course, there were breakdowns and mistakes.

“Unbelievably, the party has no active or consistent political education programme (and) no leadership training capacity building. We need to accept collective responsibility at all levels for the almost total breakdown of the group and membership structure and the ground organisation,” Burke added.

But contacted for confirmation of his comments, Burke said that in the circumstances, it was fortunate that the PNP had lost as heavily as it did, otherwise the party might have imploded with both sides of the leadership divide blaming each other for a close defeat.

His reference was to the rift in the party caused by Peter Bunting’s challenge and near toppling of Dr Peter Phillips for the presidency of the PNP last September that some analysts cite as a major contributor to the 48-15 trouncing by the JLP.

In the SundaySun article, Burke, who was at one time seen as a future leader of the party, said the September 2019 presidential contest came with “good, bad and the ugly”.

“The contest and the challenge for leadership by itself did not hurt the party. It was the uncivility and conduct of many; and the open and in many instances the strident and unfair castigation of Party President Peter Phillips that did the real damage. These were self-inflicted wounds.

“The Jamaican people, our own supporters and members expected better from the people’s party. The Jamaican people knew that we were not really united and the famous letter (about Phillips’ cancer diagnosis), whatever may have been their intentions, signed by fifteen Members of Parliament, certainly did not help.

“This added to the confusion, suspicions and mistrust, convincing many more that we were only showing sham unity — a lesson that should long have been learned that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’,” he said.

He, however, described Dr Phillips’ decision to retire as correct, after noting: “The problems of the party are much more and much bigger than the face and name of the leader of the party. Of course, the party president has to take ultimate responsibility, notwithstanding the fact he was only party president for three plus years.”

Burke also reserved some scathing remarks for the victorious JLP, saying it had reaped all the fruits planted by the previous PNP Administration and had more resources “to spend and boast about, and to loot”.

“The JLP, along with the Government of Jamaica, had the best public relations and communications infrastructure; aided and abetted by having their own radio station, one able to rationalise, spin and credibly repackage the JLP’s failures.

“This allowed rationalisation and cover-up for the mismanagement, corruption and sheer looting of the national resources…In the absence of the data privacy legislation, the JLP used the data base of the Government of Jamaica’s CARE Package recipients and many other government programmes by sending both overt and covert JLP messages to the wider Jamaican population.

“The JLP was grossly cash rich, with so much more disposable funds, outspending the People’s National Party, conservatively, on a ratio of twenty to one. We cannot and will never be able to compete with the JLP with their money power and mobilisation of voters, a generous terminology,” Burke suggested.

– Tomorrow: Paul Burke’s prescription for rebuilding the PNP