KINGSTON, Jamaica—Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has come out in strong defence of his wife Juliet Holness, warning that she will not be bullied as she performs her duties as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Holness gave the warning Sunday as he addressed the 83rd annual conference of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in Montego Bay, St James.

Speaking against the backdrop of the recent standoff between the speaker and members of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) that led to a near fistfight between the PNP’s Mikael Phillips and the JLP’s Desmond McKenzie, the prime minister declared his wife to be “the epitome of independence, strong, beautiful, smart and a caring Jamaican woman”.

He told the conference that he and his wife grew up in “very humble circumstances” in Spanish Town, St Catherine. “We had no special privileges or entitlement. We grew up in the rough and tumble of Spanish Town,” he emphasised.

Continuing, Holness said:“We had to face many a bullies and people with bad minds who think badly, and we learned that for order to prevail, we must stand up to bullies and people with bad minds”.

He warned that the Government “will not allow bullyism and disorder to prevail in our Parliament or in our nation for that matter”. He added that the JLP did not want confrontation and was the peace-loving party.
“But we’re also the party of order and rules,” he said.

The relationship between the speaker and Opposition members has been testy at best and antagonistic at worst, as was seen by the near brawl in the House of Representatives on November 3.

-Lynford Simpson