It seems that high-calorie and low-nutrition politics has finally triumphed at 89 Old Hope Road. How else must reasonable Jamaicans interpret the recent threat of “actions all over Jamaica” if the Andrew Holness-led Administration does not rescind the appointment of Dennis Chung as chief technical director of the Financial Investigations Division (FID) within 72 hours by the general secretary of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) Dr Dayton Campbell?
Was this a Fergusonesque “not babies in the real sense” slip of the tongue moment by Dr Campbell? He was emphatic. “We are giving this Government 72 hours to rescind this appointment. And if they do not rescind it, there will be actions all over Jamaica,” declared Campbell at a PNP press conference at the party’s Old Hope Road headquarters in St Andrew week before last.
When asked by a reporter if he meant that there will be “pandemonium” in Jamaica or “demonstrations” led by the political party if Chung does not step down, Campbell responded: “I do not have that word in my vocabulary; I said no such thing.” (Loop Jamaica, May 29, 2025)
Last Monday, the first day of the workweek, the PNP staged a demonstration at Heroes’ Circle. Should reasonable folks still have any doubts about what Dr Campbell the CEO of the PNP meant? I don’t think so.
We have seen this movie before by the PNP. The ending has always been terrifying for especially ordinary Jamaicans. Demonstrations, dislocation, unwarranted displacement, and dissension do not help Jamaica. These desperate tactics have caused especially ordinary Jamaicans to become poorer and less respected.
Ironically, the PNP says it is the party of the poor and loves the poor. Someone once said: “The PNP loves the poor so much it spent the majority of its time fuelling an assembly line which produces greater poverty.”
At the mentioned presser, Dr Campbell said: “The point I’m making… is that we’re taking back our country from the clutches of despair.” Despair for whom? Was he talking about those suffering with vaulting ambition in the PNP?

PAST IS PRESENT
Dr Campbell said: “The PNP will not stand idly by while the Government makes highly inappropriate appointments.” Information in the public domain shows that the proper processes during the selection and appointment of Chung were carried out by the Office of the Services Commission (OSC). It is curious — well, maybe not so curious — that the PNP and simultaneously certain civil society groups are now arguing that the requirements for the job of chief technical Director of the FID were watered down to give an advantage to Chung. The PNP and these groups did not raise this objection at the time of the advertisement in January 2025? Why? I think the reasons are obvious maybe except to the wilfully blind.
What is really driving the PNP to resurrect ghosts from our past which have done immense damage to especially ordinary Jamaicans? I think the shrapnel of the infamous Pickersgill Committee that was set up in the mid-1970s, while Prime Minister Michael Manley was at Jamaica House are still stuck in the DNA of the PNP.
In my The Agenda of August 11, 2024, entitled ‘The dangerous among us… Lust for State power at all costs pushes advocates of fatal upheaval’, I noted among other things: “In 1976, Dr D K Duncan, the minister of national mobilisation, said in Parliament: ‘In a Ministry of National Mobilisation in a socialist Government, it is very difficult to employ somebody who is not a socialist. I make no apology. Every single employee in the Ministry of National Mobilisation, his (sic) credentials as a democratic socialist are clear and pure.’ “
What was the gist of the political background to Dr Duncan’s boast? Well, after the sordid general election in 1976, the PNP created a party Accreditation Committee, called the Pickersgill Committee of Political Purity. Its primary objective was screening of candidates to ensure that appointees were bona fide socialists, “politically pure”. Shocked? Several times in this space since November 2020 I have warned about the direction of the wind signals from the storm cone at 89 Old Hope Road. Well, maybe this most recent gust will awaken some from their slumber.
What was the overall result of the PNP’s systematic populating of the civil service with political acolytes? They did the bidding of their party to the detriment of the country. Incidentally, for those who love straw men, please don’t confuse people who are employed as part of the political cadre with the civil service.
It is not uncommon for administrations globally to have key political posts staffed with competent individuals with complementary political values. There is a big difference between that prudent and globally accepted practice and the systematic populating of the civil service — which is supposed to be an impartial set of highly talented technocrats — with rabid political actors like those Dr D K Duncan boasted of in Parliament in 1976. The terrible consequences of his actions are still present today.
I am not surprised at the resurrection of the ghost of demonstrations. Recall PNP Chairman, now Chairman Emeritus Robert “Bobby” Pickersgill, said publicly: “We believe that it is best for the PNP to form the Government; therefore, anything that will lead or cause us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country.” Pickersgill said it on radio in the 90s. As I see it, anything, excludes nothing.

THE REAL SITUATION
The demonstration at Heroes’ Circle last Monday, and the threat of “actions across Jamaica”, by Dr Campbell and the PNP are less about Chung and his appointment at the FID and more so about persons in the PNP with a politically “lean and hungry look”.
This is the real situation: We are nearing the holding of our 19th general election since universal adult suffrage in 1944. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) is leading the PNP by four percentage points, according to the latest Bluedot polls. The PNP has been campaigning up and down the highways and byways continually for nearly four years. The PNP, unsurprisingly, has made some appreciable gains. Nonetheless, the ruling JLP remains ahead. The PNP, doubtless, recognises that it needs an event to upset the apple cart.
“Events determine elections,” Harold Macmillan, the British conservative politician who was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963, said so in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), decades ago. I agree. The PNP is desperately looking for an event that changes the political tide in its favour. The Chung appointment is just a convenient event which is being used by 89 Old Hope Road to further an immediate political objective, as I see it. What is that objective? It is the securing of the political futures of Mark Golding, Dr Dayton Campbell, Dr Angela Brown Burke, Peter Bunting, and others.
It is no secret that the PNP still remains divided into two camps — the OnePNP and the RiseUnited outfits. There are some in either political camp who are sitting by the proverbial river anxiously waiting and hoping to see the bodies of their political nemeses float by.
Golding and those mentioned know that if the PNP loses the general election their political careers are over. A loss for Golding will mean he will have to tender his resignation almost immediately, I suspect, faster than how former PNP president and Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips fled the lofty perch at 89 Old Hope Road. The Chung appointment is being used as a smokescreen by the PNP. As we say in local parlance, “Is a face card.” There is no if, but, or maybe, the upcoming general is a do-or-die contest for Golding and the PNP. They know it.
Mark Golding’s PNP has a huge problem on its hand: How does it sensibly and practically compete against an Administration with a record of nationally meaningful and verifiable achievements like Andrew Holness’s JLP?
The Holness Administration has kept the dollar stable. It has reduced the debt, and in so doing has created fiscal space which has enabled it to appreciably improve salaries for public sector workers, improve social and physical infrastructures nationally, such as roads, hospitals, clinics, police stations, and make big upgrades to equipment used by the security forces. The Administration has kept our international credit rating moving in a positive direction, capital flight is negligible; inflation is in low single digits, crime is massively trending down, murders in particular have nose-dived. Last week it was reported that last month only one murder was committed in the parish of St James, the veritable murder capital of the Caribbean. Unemployment is the lowest since we started to keep those records. Macroeconomically, it’s the best of times for the Administration, and a very worrying one for the PNP.
When an Opposition is nearing a national election and finds itself facing the achievements which the Administration has put on the board and also finds itself lagging behind in the polls it has five possible recourses. I will talk about three and leave the other two, which are particularly menacing, for another piece.
The PNP has been screaming corruption as loud as possible in every nook and cranny for the last four years. That is tactic #1 — the go-to tactic when Oppositions are facing an Administration with a meaningful and verifiable record of especially economic and social achievements. The PNP’s corruption hollering has had some negative impact on the JLP as regards public sentiment. But the PNP’s screaming has not caused a toppling over.
Tactic #2 is that Opposition parties that face a solid record of achievement by the incumbent run to the foreign press and try and paint the home Government in a severely negative light on a whole host of issues. Since 2016 the PNP has tried this tactic. It has flatlined, and quickly. Why? You need to have credible and verifiable information to put to the foreign press before they take up your cause.
Tactic #3 is for an Opposition to massively pressure the incumbent on their record of taxation. The PNP cannot credibly pull that lever. Moreover, two of the Opposition’s senior spokespersons let the proverbial “puss out of the bag” when they telegraphed new taxes if the PNP were to form a future Administration.
Recall Senator Damion Crawford’s proposed 1 per cent increase in the General Consumption Tax (GCT) and recall, too, Dr Dayton Campbell’s “put a little thing” food tax. These hiccups and related cock-ups have cost the PNP.
The Opposition is now caught in a quandary. It has a leader who is not widely seen as authentic, warm and competent. Plus, for 10 consecutive budgets the Holness Administration has not introduced any new taxes on the people of Jamaica. Instead, the incumbent has consistently reduced taxes. This is a new normal in Jamaica. There was a time when it was severely traumatic to listen to the annual budget speech presentation of the minister of finance because new and increased taxes were staples.

REVERSION MISTAKE
The PNP made a big mistake when it staged a demonstration last Monday and its threat of “actions all over Jamaica” was another big blow to its chances of gaining a majority share of the 32 per cent of undecided voters which Bluedot’s recent poll show is still seeking a political home. The PNP has totally misread the political zeitgeist, I believe.
Automatic “pricking of political blood”, a term coined by British politician Roy Jenkins, is not always wise. I don’t believe the PNP and Mark Golding understand this. I don’t think Golding and the PNP understand either that in order to win the next general election they have to persuade people who did not vote for the PNP the last time. Those individuals are invariably in the centreground.
As I see it, the PNP is preoccupied with the drinking of its own political bathwater and living in its own echo chamber. More next week.

Garfield Higgins is an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.