I can still hear echoes of the wildly celebrating Labourites gathered at Rony’s bar in Stony Hill Square on the night of September 3 shouting, “Showa! Showa! Showa! PNP dead; dem caan come back!” After three devastating by-election defeats and the disastrously finite general election results, the Labourites could be forgiven, especially the more intoxicated among them. But drunk or not, they were wrong, very wrong. We have been here before and as it was then, we will rise again.

For certain, the results did not determine the PNP’s end but rather an end to the arrogance, rejection of science, disunity, disrespect and mediocrity that have inflicted the party for far too long. To find the seeds of our painful defeat we must go back and go deep to an earlier time. Above and beyond the unarguable disrespect shown to Portia Simpson Miller at her coming and exit from the political stage, which accounted for a significant number of the 168,000 Comrades who have not voted since 2016, there were other more critical missteps.

In the unmistakable paradox of Dr Peter Phillips’s political life, we find him at once as the preeminent ministerial performer of our time while being baffled at the grave omissions of his leadership decisions. Facts are hard truths which acridly elucidate both sides of our life’s ledger. In Peter’s case, his coordination of the Greater Portmore Project under the San Jose Accord and his dogged brilliance in fashioning the macroeconomic stability we now enjoy, will one day, perhaps not in his time, be fully exalted by unvarnished history.

But there were fatal mistakes too. On his ascension as party leader in 2017 he fervently resolved to end the practice of unapologetic reward to loyalists, which though correct, was bereft of the balance needed for political survival. In truth, his self-distancing act went too far – and I told him so. Surrounded by new men and women who suffered not on his tortuous climb to the party’s throne, he stood alone as commitment waned, leadership interest prevailed and party preparedness failed. Not a single number of his leadership team enjoined the many articles I wrote in the public space supporting his tenure.

Perhaps the most fatal mistake of that misguided path was the contrived removal of vice-president Dr Fenton Ferguson, the six-time winning MP for St Thomas Eastern, Peter’s most influential political colleague. In truth, it was Dr Ferguson’s unflinching support that delayed Peter Bunting’s leadership challenge from 2016-2019 in the face of Dr Phillips’s disappointing poll numbers. With many of his supporters from the Patriots group promoting Fergie’s demise in the 2018 vice-presidential race, Peter stood unmoved. More than that, they cheered the fall of a giant who, as the former chairman of Region 2, had earlier oversaw the victories of seven out of seven MPs. Pointedly, he displayed elevated loyalty to Dr Phillips by standing with him in the bitter 2006 and 2008 contests against Portia Simpson Miller, whom he supported in her 1992 leadership battle with a popular PJ Patterson.

More potent to the September 3 debacle was the fall of the tall doctor, the JLP’s nemesis in the St Thomas Eastern stronghold they had held for 45 long years before he came. Disappointed, dispirited and bypassed, Dr Ferguson was never the same thereafter and with his removal came not only Peter Bunting’s leadership challenge and the disunity it precipitated but sadly also, the loss of all but one of the seven seats in Region 2.

High on the list of omissions was the absence of a proper enumeration infrastructure. Indeed, the JLP was using laptops while the PNP had only slates. There was no systematic programme to identify and capture 18-year-olds from relevant websites, a fact played out islandwide. Notwithstanding the JLP’s Edmund Bartlett’s exaggerated boast of enumerating 5,000 new voters to win in Westmoreland Central and the entire west, there were other missteps involved. Young Dwayne Vaz, a Peter Phillips loyalist, previously burdened with the Region 6 chairmanship and four out of five JLP councillors in his domain, was unwisely and inconceivably appointed deputy house leader after the leadership contest, fully oblivious to the prevailing demands of his constituency and the wider region. Predictably, not a single PNP candidate survived.

Again, recruitment and expansion of the party suffered from pervading disrespect, indecency and disunity. In this we have lost the essence of the word comrade, as we routinely disparage each other in the name of our favourite political gods. In addition, the practice of facilitating existing paper groups while stifling the formation of new groups, to maintain the power of constituency leaders, has continued to the party’s detriment. Nowhere was this more evident than in the loss of Kingston Central as two rejected groups, totalling over 100 new members plus additional recruits, switched to the JLP at the urging of their slighted chairmen, enticed by offerings from the other side.

The hopelessness of our vicious internal divide was also fully exposed in the Bunting challenge, with local leaders replacing bona fide delegates on long-settled listings. This deceptive, sinister practice even saw siblings denying each other and some rejecting the delegate status of parents opposed to their candidate.

Amidst the inability of the party’s secretariat to bring transparency and sanity to such degrading manoeuvres, names ratified today were gone tomorrow. They cared not that those rejected, including very effective polling division workers, would be needed with the call of elections to come. Many never came back and the PNP suffered with incomplete cavassing, inadequate enumeration and inevitably, a disaster on election day. Only one successful PNP candidate prevailed in Regions 1, 2 and 5.

Importantly also, the massive JLP funding throve enhanced by the unrelenting plunder of the public purse cannot be discounted in the glaring financial disparity between both parties in preparation, execution and ultimately, the election outcome.

At another level the PNP, so founded on professionalism, intellectual output and forward thinking epitomised by its brilliant founder, Norman Manley, became regressive and dogmatic in its rejection of scientific polling. In the end the polls were correct. The party was down, our leader was down, way down. We arrogantly and dismissively pushed our own untested views and promoted gossip and conspiracy theories fed by social media dragons, most of whom had never ventured or experienced the wretched crucible of political struggle. In that demeaning period of disrespect we heeded not the call for corrective strategies to place the leader and the party in a better place. In this too, the lessons of our 2016 defeat went unheeded – that a hungry populace, now even more desperate in a COVID-19 world, needed something to hold on to.

Like 2016 also, our unremembered 2020 manifesto was woefully deficient, offering assistance on utility bills which the masses hardly pay. Included also was a meaningless rent-to-purchase housing option, while Brogad disingenuously offered 20,000 houses per year, as was the case with his deceptive $18,000 rebate in 2016. Moreover, someone forgot to remind Damion Crawford that rent is an unwelcomed, post-slavery economic term; an anathema to the poor, benefiting the unfairly certified propertied class.

Missing also was the long unmet call to establish a dedicated research unit within the secretariat. Critically, its work would have provided the leader with relevant data for fact-checking in real time, as was needed in his national debate against Andrew Holness with his housing starts deception. That apart, the unit would have assisted candidates on a variety of issues critical to the impending battle. But, the central role for correction and rebuilding now falls to a new leader. By now we should have resolved that the demonisation of Comrades only creates irreversible disunity and delays the party’s return to viability and growth. From here on we must endeavour to highlight and celebrate the positives and offer constructive critique in a spirit of civility and decency towards our fellow Comrades.

In this regard, Lisa Hanna must be seen as a capable, attractive aspirant for party leadership. As I said earlier, facts are stubborn things and polling science clearly tells us that she would be more than a formidable match for the teflon Brogad. An intelligent princess and a national asset, she must overcome the divisive import of her past to gain the final prize; and she can. Her enlightened position on the Palestinian and Venezuelan cause has widened her claim,but here at home we await her pronouncements on the financial and economic disparities that abound.

The ancient Greeks tell us that character is destiny. The high discipline, decency and cerebral offerings of Mark Golding make him an ideal candidate to end our dark season of disrespect, incompetence and inadequacy. His platform role in fashioning the financial legislations underpinning our route to macroeconomic stability, though largely unsung, speaks powerfully to his worth and commitment to his country’s good. Beyond that, he portends a refreshing intervention in the unending cycle of corruption we have witnessed, a character trait vital to our survival as a nation. For Mark, too, we await his yet unheard position on the blinding inequality and inequity in our land, a test he must pass to be worthy of the elevated slot.

Finally, my Comrades, for all our shortcomings, disappointments and defeats endured, for all our hopes denied and dreams deferred, the PNP movement that began so long ago, undertaken so imperfectly since Norman left, is still worth fighting for. There is in fact no struggle more worthy, more noble than the one we must continue to wage, to lift up the poor, the working class and the least of these.

The People’s National Party’s Paul Buchanan is a former Member of Parliament for St Andrew West Rural.