KINGSTON, Jamaica – “We are not the same”.

That was the theme of the brief message brought by People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell, as he sought to highlight differences between the opposition PNP and the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) at the PNP’s 84th Annual Conference on Sunday.

“Comrades, they are trying to say that there is no difference between the PNP and that other party and it is a lie from the pit of hell because we are not the same,” Campbell insisted.

“We are not the same because this political party does not allow any foreign government to tell us who our friends should be, we determine who we are friends with based on their relationship with us and so we welcome our visiting friends here today because the PNP is a regional and an international organisation,” Campbell declared.

“We are not the same because the PNP does not offer loans to students when bombs are dropping and people are dying. The PNP send money to bring them home,” he added.

That was a clear reference to the situation when Russia invaded Ukraine in February and the government initially offered loans to Jamaican students studying there to help get them home. By contrast, Opposition leader Mark Golding offered US$10,000 to the students, money the government said it paid back as a spat developed between the two parties over the incident.

“We are not the same because the PNP don’t collect hedge tax from you and don’t buy insurance so you have high oil prices. The PNP put insurance in place to protect you against high oil prices,” Campbell continued.

He claimed St Vincent and the Grenadines, which has such a policy, has the lowest fuel prices in the region. A hedge fund was implemented by a previous PNP government to guard against high oil prices and, while it has been maintained by the JLP administration, critics have called for it to be removed so fuel prices could be lowered.

“We are not the same because we don’t have a leader who run ‘roun from constituency to constituency opening one ‘degga, degga’ house. We open housing schemes, we build communities, we are for the people,” Campbell stated.

“We are not the same because we don’t have a leader who think that him haffi come, wear clothes and call himself ‘brodevil’ or whatever. We have a leader who has substance, who has character, who has clean heart and clean hands and is pure in spirit. We are not the same, we are a progressive party; we are the People’s National Party,” Campbell concluded.