THE manner in which the People’s National Party (PNP) handled Ms Zuleika Jess’s bid to contest one of the party’s four vice-president posts will, we expect, erode some of the gains that Mr Mark Golding, the PNP president, has made to heal long-standing wounds.

People who know Ms Jess have described her as a promising political prospect. The party hierarchy apparently agrees, since she served as legal advisor to the PNP Youth Organisation and was one of the youth arm’s representatives on the National Executive Council (NEC) until 2018 when she was appointed chair of the party’s constituency organisation in the Clarendon Central constituency.

However, the PNP, in outlining its reasons for rejecting Ms Jess’s bid, noted that under its constitution a vice-presidential nominee “…must have had membership in the party for a minimum five-year period, be a member of a recognised constituency committee, regional management committee or NEC member, and must have at least 24 members signing their nomination papers, 12 of whom must be current members of the NEC from at least three regions”.

The party also told us that Ms Jess’s direct membership was suspended as no payment had been made since 2018. As such, her direct membership was superseded and came to an end by her becoming a group member. However, her group subsequently went into abeyance and her membership is now provisional, on account of her group being re-registered on January 31, 2022.

Last week, in her response to the PNP’s statement, Ms Jess said that since 2017 she has been a member of the NEC.

She also said that she sought independent legal advice and was told that even if the party were to take a technical point on her group membership, she “could simply fall back” on her direct membership by paying the annual subscription prior to nomination, since there is no provision in the party’s constitution that states that a direct member falls into abeyance.

Ms Jess also said there is no provision stating that a direct member is required to reapply or re-register, as is the case with group membership.

While the party may insist that it stands on solid ground, it needs to address Ms Jess’s claim that during a meeting with the general secretary on June 23, 2022, she was assured that her membership was not an issue and that there would be no attempt to block her candidacy on that basis.

If that is true, the party’s subsequent action does not inspire confidence in the credibility and trustworthiness of the secretariat.

The PNP also needs to explain why it put forward Ms Zess as a candidate in the 2020 General Election if, as it states, her membership was suspended.

Internal party contests are often brutal as political ambitions tend to trump rational behaviour. History is replete with gutless acts of treachery in such contests that only serve to deepen division which takes years to mend. And even post-contest displays of unity are unable to mask deep suspicion among political pugilists.

Mr Golding, as we said, had started to make some ground in uniting the party after his own involvement in the unsuccessful leadership challenge posed by his close friend and former business partner Mr Peter Bunting to then PNP President Dr Peter Phillips in 2019.

The Zuleika Jess matter has just made his job more difficult.