KINGSTON, Jamaica -Opposition Member of Parliament for St Andrew South Western Angela Brown-Burke has taken Prime Minister Andrew Holness to task for branding as “political entrepreneurs”, critics of his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government.

Holness made the comments on Tuesday in the House of Representatives while making a statement during which he tabled the long-awaited job descriptions for Members of Parliament and Cabinet ministers.

He described a political entrepreneur as a person who “exists in the gap between implementation (of government projects) and results”.

The prime minister explained that “while you’re implementing, you don’t see the results and the political entrepreneur takes advantage of the gap between implementation and results to try to tell the public that it won’t happen, that it not going to happen”.

“Continuing, Holness said: “They try to mislead the public; they monetise misinformation, they monetise discontent”.

Insisting that there are many political entrepreneurs around, Holness, who had earlier listed a raft of projects and initiatives he said were successfully undertaken and implemented by the government, stated that his administration was pursuing change without fear.

“It takes courage to do that,” he stressed.

He quoted former People’s National Party Chairman Robert Pickersgill speaking in the Parliament saying “you cannot have change without confrontation”.

“It means that as we seek to change Jamaica, we will come up against deep-seated beliefs, perspectives that have been well established,” Holness said.

Stung by the prime minister’s statement, which she perceived to be him not welcoming criticism, Brown-Burke hit back.

“The prime minister has a way of looking at opinions that don’t coincide with his as being persons who don’t have the country’s interest at heart, who working with commonsense, without intelligence, or are ‘fool fool,’” said Brown-Burke.

“I believe that when our leaders approach [the] opinions of patriotic Jamaicans whose only interest is a better country, a government that’s run on good governance, that drop ‘government badness’, a government that doesn’t attack individuals who don’t agree. I believe when you go down that road it’s a bad precedent”.

The opposition MP argued that overreach by the government was something that everyone looks out for.

“It is something that we are sworn when we get here (to Parliament) to make sure we prevent.

We’re also sworn to defend the rights of the Jamaican people and I wanted to say, without fear or favour, ‘nuh matter what badness anyone comes in here with. No matter the words anyone uses inside here, you’re not going to get us on this side to stop talking about those things that we believe are wrong,” Brown-Burke declared.

“We’re also going to continue talking on behalf of the Jamaican people,” she warned.