FORMER Prime Minister P J Patterson said Sunday that it was the destiny of current leader Mark Golding to become leader of the 84-year-old People’s National Party (PNP).

Patterson, who took over leadership of the party in 1992, when Michael Manley retired and was succeeded by Portia Simpson Miller, urged members of the party’s National Executive Council (NEC) to give Golding their full support.

“It was not part of his own agenda and part of his political ambition. If the truth be told, I think I might have been the first person to alert him. I told him to be prepared for any eventuality,” Patterson told members of the party’s NEC, who were meeting at The University of the West Indies to discuss a policy paper outlining the Opposition’s way forward, which is expected to be approved by its next annual conference in September.

He said Golding’s predecessor as leader, Dr Peter Phillips, had served the party with distinction, “and he must be recognised for his lifelong contribution”.

“He decided to step aside, and the party asked me to see if I could find a way of getting a candidate that could command general support. And quickly I realised that, that was not only impossible, but it would not be accordance with the traditions of the party. The party has the right to choose. Comrade Mark Golding, up to the night of the election, had never sought what was going to happen to him,” Patterson told the delegates.

“There was a contest and he was chosen. It is his destiny to lead, and it is our obligation to give him total and qualified support. We have to understand something. Not every decision every party leader takes everybody will agree with.

“But there are some decisions that fall within the prerogative of the party leader. That is why he is the party leader, and we must offer him the full respect and the authority…and believe you me, you and I saw and read some of the things that were being said, but I never knew that Comrades could trace Comrade so! It is awful. And the Labour Party just lap it up,” Patterson added.

He said that he had raised the issue at the closing session of the two-day meeting of the NEC because he is relieved that certain trends which he had seen emerging within the PNP suggests that “we can all be together again”.

He commended the members who had decided not to offer themselves at this time for certain positions, accepted changes to their assignments to permit others to become, once again, fully engaged and show Jamaica that “all a we are one”.

“I have a complaint to make though. He has brought to this office tremendous energy. No party leader has gone to more divisional conferences. But I don’t want to see him going any place [without support]. It never happened to Michael Manley, never happen to me, never happened to Sister P. And I want when Mark Golding step out, oonu step with him.”

Golding, an attorney-at-law, former senator, minister of justice, and an investment banker, has been leader of the Opposition and president of the People’s National Party since November 2020 when he was selected by a majority of the delegates. However, the party has suffered from divisions created by his selection since then, including recent objections raised publicly by his predecessor, Dr Phillips, to his proposal for the Government to spend some $40 billion to address the effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic.