MONTEGO BAY, St James — People’s National Party (PNP) candidate for the Montego Bay North East Division, Allan Bernard is insisting that if individuals come out and vote, he will win by an impressive margin.

“If the good people of Montego Bay North East get the opportunity to turn out on election day, I will win that seat by a landslide,” he told the
Jamaica Observer.

He is appealing to the electorate to exercise their right to vote… and vote for him.

Bernard is going up against well-established incumbent Charles Sinclair, who has been the councillor for the last 21 years. Sinclair decisively beat Andrew Brown 1,475 to 363 votes when the polls were last held in 2016.

However, Bernard is adamant that he has a fighting chance. “I would get more than 5,000 votes if good people are allowed to come out,” he stated.

He believes his track record and the fact that he lives in the division will work in his favour next Monday.

“I grow up in Flanker and work with the community at various points in leadership. I have been there from folk group, youth club until we built the Peace and Justice Centre which is now the Flanker Resource Centre — me and other community representatives,” Bernard asserted.

“I have worked with every group to bring every kind of service to the community, broker peace and make the community calm down at it worst between 2006 and 2010,” he added.

He is confident that, if given the opportunity, Flanker residents and others within the division will benefit from the community activism that he continues to do. He also believes they will benefit from the wealth of knowledge and experience he has gained during his time as a teacher and researcher at The University of the West Indies.

“My substantive activities are around development, it’s around sustainable development and that is not as difficult as it sounds,” Bernard explained. “You just need somebody who can think strategically and develop and create, not even activities, but programmes. Because activities sound a little bit one-offish, [but] sustainable programmes continue over time until you start to see the change and that is what we’ve been doing,” he added.

He said that his ability to identify those areas of development will be a boon to the division and complement the work being done by the wider municipal corporation.

“I’m not saying there is no money in the [municipal corporations] because that’s not where it stops; they play their part. But there is a way in which you mobilise resources to get these activities out and we can do these things,” he argued.

Bernard believes there should be a greater push towards identifying other ways, outside of reliance on the public and private sectors, of building the local economy to ensure greater growth.

“There is a brand new sector called the social sector, a brand new operation called the social enterprise. All over the world they are doing it,” he said.

Bernard also pointed to his track record of working in the field of urban agriculture, skills he also thinks will come in handy in growing the local economy. He believes he brings a lot to the table.

“I’m saying it’s a level of competency; and that is absent from the local government process and that is why it has gone how it has gone. You have to understand that the local government process, because that is where the people come the closest contact with their political representatives, it has to have a development role,” he remarked.

However, while having big plans, he acknowledged that he must first get elected. He said his campaign has been going well while his opponent is rarely seen in the division.

“If you go into Flanker now and ask anybody why them support the current candidate, one answer you getting and that answer is when you go to jail, it is him that you go to, nothing more,” he said of Sinclair who is an attorney.

“When I go on the streets, the narrative is I don’t have those resources to waste, my resources are to keep you from getting into jail in the first place,” Bernard declared.

He believes people want more than the kind of representation they have received in the past. “Road work being done, not even getting any traction, people asking if is now him trying to fix road and sidewalks,” he said dismissively.

“You can’t come on programme and talk about building roads. You never build any roads; it’s taxpayer’s money that build the road. Anybody that was in office would have built the road because the money was there,” he stated.

Bernard contended that the incumbent is actually benefiting from things that he has set in motion. “Most of those monies was donor money that I facilitated because I work heavily with all donor partners and people are not fool. It’s like a father who took care of his child and seeking praise,” he said.