When P J Patterson stepped down as president of the People’s National Party (PNP) in 2006, no one could imagine that this great party and movement would have descended into political abyss so rapidly. The election for a new president saw four contestants and a spirited campaign. In the end Portia Simpson Miller was victorious. There were forces that never accepted their defeat and they consistently undermined party and party leader.

Her victory was followed by two new developments in the PNP: Firstly, the sore losers could not believe her victory, and there were those who actively campaigned for party members to boycott her election. Subsequently, party members covertly and overly launched aggressive and dirty campaigns against her, with most disgraceful and dirty things coming out of the mouth of K D Knight, Maxine Henry, and a few others on campaign platforms. The new president of the PNP was treated as the enemy. They were never reprimanded by the leader they were campaigning for. Subsequently, a new tradition of attacking party members with the aim to destroy as they seek power began.

The next major consequence of the post-Patterson regime was the new poles of power that emerged in the party was that individuals were said to be collecting money for the party and it was not going into the central party treasury. My advice to the president of the PNP is to look to Edward Seaga for lessons on how to deal with dissidents and still maintain power.

I will deal with the last one first: Trafigura would have never happened under the treasury leadership of Dr Vin Lawrence. And I will leave it there. There rumours were too regular about senior party operatives collecting money intended for the party, but was appropriated for self and constituency. Issues concerning this matter were discussed in the press, so they were no secret.

The post-Patterson PNP declined seriously because of the consistent division and character assassinations. Those activities made things difficult for Simpson Miller. In the past she had a Michael Manley and a P J Patterson to defend her against some of the “grey tone” men in the party, especially in the Cabinet. The new PNP was most difficult for her, and she tried to create a balance of power in her favour. Some of her actions did not help, in the end they worsened the party divide and soured the mood of the party.

I recall the moment that Simpson Miller was presented with Lisa Hanna at a function in recognition of her victory as the new president of the PNP. She raised the hand of the latter and pledged to make her a political leader in the PNP. It may have been one of the greatest of mistakes the new president made. It was a time when candidates were being parachuted into some constituencies to improve her power balance in the party. The mistake deepened when, in order to prevent a candidate who was not considered a member of the Simpson Miller camp, the president’s new recruit for political leadership was imposed on the constituency of St Ann South Eastern. All rules were broken to have the former Miss World run in the party’s safest seat. Very soon the new recruit bit all the hands that fed her, as she began to write a new chapter in party and constituency.

This is what the internal power struggle inspired — a new history of conspiracies. A lesson here is that party rules must not be broken to accommodate strangers, and political association must be guided by rugged scrutiny when taking others from the outside into the higher ranks of the party. Be careful who you allow into your inner circle.

The PNP was formed by well-thinking Jamaicans who had the courage to assert themselves to build a new national society in Jamaica as they struggled for better conditions for the masses. Think about the likes of W A Domingo, W A Roberts, O T Fairclough, Richard Hart, Ken Hill, and the Edith Dalton James, who helped to build this once great movement, compared them with those who are creating the chaos in the party today. In the past some of the finest men and women joined the PNP to provide a special quality of politics for both colonial and post-colonial Jamaica. So many people, especially the youth, joined the PNP with the thinking of entitlement to power.

The first leader of the party told the audience inside and outside Ward Theatre, September 1938, the aim of the PNP was to “serve the masses of the country”. He pledged that party members would one day, “mastered ourselves, consolidated our national spirit as Jamaicans, and ready to accept the burden and responsibility of guarding our own destiny in the world”. In another speech he made it clear that the party must be the eye and the ear in every polling division, and it must be prepared at all times to provide the alternative to the existing Government.

Where is the PNP today? What is happening in the PNP? Like the parrots of Shortwood, there’s lots of babbling in the party and on social media, but the difference is, while the parrots of Shortwood make sense of each other and then they take off in the same direction, there is no comprehension among and between the participants in the PNP. Those, and their surrogates, who were the losers in the last presidential election were never fearful to publicly express that the ‘war’ is not over. In the earliest week of his presidency, vicious and wicked verbal assaults were hurled against the new president of the PNP. Efforts by the new Administration to extend olive branch were spurned. The PNP got quiet; spokespersons sank into a culture of silence while the forces tearing the party apart have been very loud, especially in the case of Dayton Campbell aggressors. There was a time when it was alleged that a PNP parliamentarian in St Ann provided finance to the candidate of the Jamaica labour Party (JLP) with a view to get Campbell defeated. Therefore, I don’t doubt that the current issue with Campbell is a political hit job.

What if the PNP in the 1990s turned over the cases of youth leaders who were involved in one of the biggest US visa scandals in the country to the police? What is happening now in the party is not typical of the PNP. What is sad is that those on the front line, as internal aggressors against the current party leaders, are not just sore leaders, but are far from having the qualities required for party leadership.

Norman Manley said that once you sign up as member of the party you are expected to work with the party and not against that which was one of the finest political movement in the West Indies and having some of the finest thinkers ever assembled in a political party in Jamaica.

Seaga left us with lessons how to fight internal party strife by not making compromises. So many “gangs” and “rebels” challenged him and he, the man alone, defeated them. Prior to the 2002 election, after defeating the “western rebels”, he did extremely well in that election. In this kind of war the rebels must be defeated. The “snakes” must be beheaded. The PNP requires rebuilding, and the days of the one powerful leader are over. The rank and file members must play their role in settling current matters, but the power of money continues to be a barrier to deal seriously with the issues.

thearchives01@yahoo.com