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The ball is in Portia's court

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  • The ball is in Portia's court

    The ball is in Portia's court
    published: Sunday | September 24, 2006
    <DIV class=KonaBody>


    Dawn Ritch

    In order for the People's National Party (PNP) to win an unprecedented fifth term, it needs to go through an obvious renewal. This is all the more necessary since there's been anything but an orderly transition of power.

    The PNP has been in power for 17 years, so long that the majority of Jamaicans have known no other. Nobody could, upon sober reflection, conclude that the administrations of either Michael Manley or P.J. Patterson was a national success. The litany of alarming statistics available bears this out. Indeed, that is a matter impatient of debate.

    They've won successive elections because of their party machinery and timing. They time the election with the business of government.

    The latter is not a fool-proof system. The then prime minister Edward Seaga tried that after a sterling performance in restoring the country following Hurricane Gilbert. But the country just turned its back on him. It didn't even matter that after the economic fall-out of the earlier Michael Manley regime, he'd restored the country as a whole to a sustained growth path.

    There was just something about Edward Seaga that didn't sit well with them. No amount of overseas public relations and advertising advice could change that. Nor any opinion polls no matter how frequently taken. There was just no spin that could be put on that ball.

    On the other hand Portia Simpson Miller needs no spin, but she has yet to put her stamp upon the PNP. Indeed she's had rather a leisurely approach to both that, and putting her stamp on the government itself. The irony is of course that all of Jamaica is Portia territory.

    Mrs. Simpson Miller continues to be in fine fettle. It is as though she's convinced that time is completely on her side, and wishes to savour every move. If so, it is not a masculine approach to governance. Were a man in power, everybody who should have been fired would have already gone, clutching only a pay slip and a retraining manual. And not a soul would have thought him bloody-minded for doing it.

    Tired old horses

    But the fact remains that no political party can renew itself unless people see new faces, instead of the same tired old horses. Mrs. Simpson Miller's horse runs at a gallop, but can anybody else in her party keep up? This is something that only the party president herself can demonstrate.

    She'll have to show us therefore what she has in the line-up of candidates who will represent the PNP. Never in the history of Jamaican politics has the quality of the candidate line-up been more important. Mrs. Simpson Miller's popularity has held steady at 60 per cent no matter what. But that doesn't change the fact that four successive PNP wins would make any voter jaundiced.

    Those registered to vote were asked whom they'd like to see form the next government. The result was 48.5 per cent to the PNP, and 44.1 per cent to the JLP.

    When those registered to vote were also asked whom they were likely to vote for, the PNP's lead was reduced to a minuscule 0.4 per cent.

    These results demonstrate that the sentiment in the country is towards the PNP, but due entirely to the popularity of its new president. The party itself, while still in the lead, is desperately in need of renewal. Mrs. Simpson Miller's enduring popularity alone will not carry the PNP into office.

    The hierarchy of the PNP traduced her reputation during the internal elections. In any event she still won. What became obviously dented as a result was the party, and not her.

    But that rancorous election armed the middle class and the Jamaica Labour Party with the ammunition that she has n
    "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

  • #2
    RE: The ball is in Portia's court

    Observer EDITORIAL:

    <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>The need for strong leadership</SPAN>
    <SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>
    Sunday, September 24, 2006
    </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
    <P class=StoryText align=justify>Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has not grasped any of the major national issues by the scruff of the neck and stamped her prime ministerial mark on them since assuming that formidable chair in February of this year.<P class=StoryText align=justify>She has instead delegated most of the responsibility to other ministers. Take the case of the protracted wage negotiations between the Government and the Police Federation, which represents the majority of policemen and women in the Jamaica Constabulary Force.<P class=StoryText align=justify>There is technically nothing wrong with delegating duties to other ministers, but in the case of the police it should never have reached the stage where following the intemperate ramblings of a junior minister, the police went on an illegal sick-out for three days without the intervention of the goodly prime minister.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The prime minister, apart from naming boards with Christian ministers, has listed crime as her number one priority. The police, since the start of the year, have really done a good job of reducing the number of murders in the country and fortunately for us, the criminals did not go out on a binge while policemen and women stayed at home with their various maladies.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Why risk an upsurge in crime at this time? Doesn't the prime minister understand that any increase in murders will only militate against her seeking and achieving her own political mandate?<P class=StoryText align=justify>The prime minister and her minister of national security should have intervened in the talks much earlier in order to allay fears and to calm the rising temperatures of the members of the Police Federation. This, we suggest Madam Prime Minister, would not be seen as pandering to the whims and fancies of one particular interest group.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Instead, we believe that by intervening in the pay dispute with the police, the prime minister would have sent a strong message to the country that she is indeed concerned about what all the polls say is the number one issue on the minds of most Jamaicans, crime.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Jamaicans want strong leadership from a strong prime minister, and not someone who prefers to lay on platitudes from the pulpit of convenience when it suits her and her cohorts.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Having dropped the ball, probably since the dispute with the nurses and before that with the cement crisis, it is now very difficult for the prime minister to take over a commanding role, especially on public issues the nature of the police negotiations.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Thankfully, the teachers, who were on the verge of a strike, accepted the Government's latest wage offer at their meeting yesterday and the country has been spared the discomfort of a shutdown of the public education system.<P class=StoryText align=justify>


    "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

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    • #3
      RE: The ball is in Portia's court

      <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>'Portia the only hope'</SPAN>
      <SPAN class=Subheadline>Patterson rallies party faithful to support Simpson Miller</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>By Balford Henry Sunday Observer writer
      Sunday, September 24, 2006
      </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
      <P class=StoryText align=justify>Immediate past president of the People's National Party (PNP), P J Patterson yesterday pinned all hopes of the party winning the next general elections on current leader, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Taking his cue apparently from the recent Stone Polls showing Simpson Miller way ahead of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Bruce Golding, but the two parties almost neck and neck, Patterson declared: "I say that not only is she the best hope of victory, she is the only hope of victory, and we must unite around her."<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=360 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>PNP president Portia Simpson Miller (2nd left) celebrates with her new vice-presidents from left, Dr Peter Phillips, Dr Fenton Ferguson, Angela Brown-Burke and Derrick Kellier shortly after they were elected at yesterday's session of the party's 68th annual conference inside the National Arena in Kingston. (Photo: Bryan Cummings) </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>The former prime minister was addressing hundreds of wildly cheering delegates who transformed the National Arena in Kingston into a sea of orange for yesterday's private session of the PNP's 68th annual conference.
      Hoping to rally the party faithful, Patterson also warned that "things no look pretty" in some constituencies he had reviewed with campaign director Dr Paul Robertson, and suggested that some current candidates would have to be replaced in order to win those constituencies.<P class=StoryText align=justify>He also reminded the crowd that the campaign for the presidency of the party was over in February and there was now a need to unite around Simpson Miller.
      His reference was obviously to lingering claims that the deep divisions opened in the party during the presidential elections had stubbornly refused to heal.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Some PNP sources believe the first woman leader had sidelined key figures who did not support her campaign, while some stalwarts had withdrawn their support, waiting for her to self-destruct.<P class=StoryText align=justify>One senior PNP source said Simpson Miller and her staunchest rival, Dr Peter Phillips, the national security minister and second in the presidential race, had not had a one-on-one meeting since the February elections.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But although acknowledging that during the heat of the presidential campaign earlier this year "some harsh things were said and some hard feelings were developed", Patterson insisted that the former presidential candidates had already made up and were working together, and he called for all comrades to leave the conference as one.
      "The party has spoken. The people have spoken. There is one leader and one team and one party. And anything that I can do to help Sister P to be a healer of the breach, I will not hesitate to do," he said.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"...We call ourselves comrades for a reason, we are brothers and sisters together in one party... When this party was being founded, we made it clear, that irrespective of the colour of your skin, you were welcome. We cannot make colour of shirt divide people in the People's National Party today. We are one party," Patterson insisted.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Indicating how deep the fissure was, Patterson disclosed that he would become involved in the party's grassroots organisation for the n
      "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

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