Government Senator Abka Fitz-Henley says the People’s National Party (PNP) secretariat and the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) have been caught participating in “corruption and organised criminality”.

Senator Fitz-Henley made the accusation during his contribution to the State of the Nation Debate in Parliament on Friday, following the leaking of conversations between PNP General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell and the party’s ousted caretaker for Kingston Central, Lawrence Rowe. Campbell was reportedly responding to an enquiry by Rowe on December 22 last year.

Fitz-Henley told Parliament that he takes note of reports that Dr Campbell was asked by Rowe, who was a then PNP caretaker, why more cash from the KSAMC was being sent to other PNP constituency leaders compared to $300,000 which was sent to him.

Senator Fitz-Henley blasted the response given by Dr Campbell in the voicenote which was leaked to some traditional and social media platforms.

“I can tell you why that happened. That’s because they put more money in the two divisions where we going to have by-elections in. So you going to have a by-election in Chancery (Hall) and Denham Town. So they put more money in the divisions that are going to have the by-elections,” Dr Campbell was quoted by Fitz-Henley in Parliament as saying in response to the enquiry by Rowe.

“We are also told of a conversation between a former councillor who now serves as an administrative staffer to Kingston’s mayor where the administrative staffer told the caretaker to come collect $300,000 cash and commented – ‘not well, the public should not know about this’. Why Mr President? Why should that be hidden from Jamaica?” Senator Fitz-Henley queried.

Fitz-Henley told Senate President Tom Tavares-Finson that he is sure Tavares-Finson as a leading King’s Counsel would agree with him that the revelations “concerning how the PNP secretariat and the KSAMC is treating with taxpayers money is unlawful and corrupt”.

“In fact, this scandal which has hit the PNP secretariat and the leadership of the KSAMC is not just corruption sir, it is organised criminality,” Fitz-Henley declared.

Fitz-Henley also dismissed as an insult to the people of Jamaica a statement by the KSAMC on Friday. The statement quoted Mayor Andrew Swaby as stating that the municipal corporation did not distribute public funds on a partisan basis to benefit the PNP.

Senator Fitz-Henley told Parliament that Mayor Swaby’s explanation appears untruthful because Dr Campbell, who he described as the de facto CEO of the PNP, mentioned the strategic distribution of money in anticipation of upcoming by-elections when Campbell was directly asked by Rowe to explain why larger sums of money from the KSAMC were given to other PNP candidates.

“The statement by Mayor Swaby is not worth the paper it is written on,” Senator Fitz-Henley told the Upper House shortly after he called for the resignation of Dr Campbell as a commissioner of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ).