DR Peter Phillips had a plane to catch, but he couldn’t leave the public session of the People’s National Party’s (PNP) 86th annual conference on Sunday without reminding Comrades to stay true to the party’s mission of building a better Jamaica.

“Remember that we are not just organising to take power. I want you to bear in mind the mission of the PNP and why we want power. We don’t want power just to say we have power; we want power because our party has always been committed to building a new Jamaica,” Phillips, a former PNP president and veteran legislator, told thousands of cheering Comrades at the National Arena in St Andrew on Sunday before leaving for an appointment overseas.

Recalling a philosophy of the party’s second president and former Prime Minister Michael Manley that the PNP does not exist to “tinker around the social order”, Phillips said the PNP has always been a party of fundamental change.

He said it was the party’s mission, bequeathed by its former presidents — Norman Manley, his son Michael, PJ Patterson, and Portia Simpson Miller — to make Jamaica a land of equality and opportunity for all its people.

“There are two things that are the foundations of the inequality that exists in our country, and it is up to this party to remedy those things,” Phillips said.

“The first underpinning of the inequality in this country is the inequalities to be found in the educational system, and time come now that once and for all we get rid of the educational apartheid in Jamaica,” said Phillips.

“It should’t matter which school you go to, every Jamaican child should get the same high-quality education… I want the party to keep that at the forefront of its mind as it advances and tackles the mission,” he urged the conference.

The former PNP president said the second underpinning of inequality in the country is the denial of economic opportunity to the people.

“We need to develop the capacity for innovation so that we can get high-paying jobs that allow people to get ahead and not have to migrate to use your scientific skill and your other skills,” he said.

Phillips also told the conference that the party must be committed to eliminating the disadvantages of the contract work system so that workers can again get the benefits that have been won for them by the trade union movement.

“But, most of all, we need to give our Jamaican people a chance to own their little piece of The Rock. I believe in reparation; I believe in the reparation from overseas, but we here owe reparation to those several hundred thousand people that we call squatters in the land of their birth,” Phillips said.

“Time come for the greatest land- titling programme in the history of the country so that those who have been designated as property-less can get their share of the inheritance that has been won by our forefathers,” he said.

Phillips also addressed the issue of the parliamentary by-election called for September 30 by Prime Minister Andrew Holness two weeks ago.

He described the by-election as a sideshow and said he supported the PNP’s decision to not contest it, given that the constituency of Trelawny Southern has been without representation since last September after the resignation by Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, and the Morant Bay Division in the St Thomas Municipal Corporation has been vacant since the death of Councillor Rohan Bryan in May.

“It is a downright disrespect of the Jamaican people because it’s a disrespect for the rights of representation of the people of south Trelawny who have been without a Member of Parliament; it is a disrespect for the people of Morant Bay, who have been without the services of a councillor. And I believe time come now for legislative reform that would cause a by-election to be held within a specified time whenever there is a vacancy, and give that power to the Electoral Commission of Jamaica so people stop playing and monkeying around with the constitutional rights of the Jamaican people,” Phillips said.