VETERAN People’s National Party (PNP) member KD Knight has told his fellow Comrades to be cautious about choosing a candidate for the Westmoreland Eastern constituency, arguing that the selection of its general secretary to be the standard bearer will have an enervating effect on the organisation.

Knight, a former Cabinet minister in several PNP Administrations and a formidable political campaigner, issued the advice in a PNP WhatsApp group in response to discord in Westmoreland Eastern over the party’s selection of General Secretary Dayton Campbell to contest the seat instead of Dr Glenville Hall.

Campbell’s choice angered some Comrades in the constituency and this week, as he toured the riding, they openly voiced their displeasure, threatening to withhold their vote if the party’s decision is not reversed.

“If they give Dr Hall a chance, Dr Hall is going to give his opponent a political backsiding in Eastern Westmoreland. No Hall, no vote,” one of the protesters told the Jamaica Observer. The threat was echoed by her compatriots.

In his WhatsApp message made public on Thursday, Knight pointed to the struggle Dr Campbell was facing to win total support in the constituency and said it signalled that something was wrong.

“Any day we get to the point where the general secretary has to struggle to get a seat — since the general secretary is now allowed to sit in the Lower House and still remain general secretary — any day that individual has to struggle for a seat, then it sends a terrible message to the party, to the public, and will have a debilitating effect on the People’s National Party, or if it is a situation that obtains with the JLP, the same,” Knight said.

“The general secretary is the chief executive officer of a party, and he is integral in determining who should run, where, and [the] process, and if he now has to struggle to get a seat, something [is] wrong, and the effect will be felt. So, we have to be careful how we are proceeding in East Westmoreland,” Knight said.

During the years when former Prime Minister PJ Patterson led the PNP the party had established a strategy of not having the general secretary contest a seat in order to have that individual concentrate on his/her role of managing the organisation. It proved beneficial to the PNP, especially during the tenures of Maxine Henry-Wilson and Burchell Whiteman.

On October 2 this year Dr Campbell was confirmed as the candidate for the constituency, with the PNP stating that the other applicants had not met the established selection threshold.

During this week’s protest against Dr Campbell, Comrades claiming to be supporters of Dr Hall, told the Observer that the Jamaica Labour Party will win the seat if they do not get their candidate.

“If we don’t get who we want on the ground, this seat is going back to the Jamaica Labour Party. We do not want Dr Campbell here; this seat will go back green,” Leroy Mullings stated. Green is the colour used by the JLP.

Mullings argued that in the 2020 General Election Dr Campbell lost the St Ann Western constituency by more 2,000 votes, while another protester, Kerron Hylton, argued that he should return to St Ann “to clean up his mess, because apparently he did something wrong why we lost by such a margin”.

However, Dr Campbell, when asked to respond to the comments, said he took no offence.

“Because of how the process ended, I think there is a disconnect between some of the persons within the constituency and how we got to a decision, and so there is a need to inform them as to how we got to where we are, and I believe that once we have done that, once we’re able to continue the dialogue, then I think that everything will be fine,” he told the Observer.

“I don’t have a problem with persons expressing their concerns. Clearly, they were invested in supporting a candidate and naturally they would want to know why that person is not going forward, and I think we have a duty to tell them why, so I don’t take that as an offence at all.

“What I’ve done is to commit myself to go around, speak to the persons. Of course, there are way more persons who are supporting [me] than who are disgruntled, but I have committed myself to give all those persons who are disgruntled all the attention that they need to ensure that their concerns can be heard and can be addressed,” Dr Campbell said.

He said he was working on the ground in the constituency, meeting residents and assuring them that he will be living in the constituency so he will be “very accessible”, as that was one of their concerns.