The Editor, Sir:

When you listen to the Trafigura affair, it seems to have fallen into the category of corruption, and leads one to wonder if this People's National Party (PNP) is the same one that was led by one of its founders, the gentlemanly Norman Washington Manley. The PNP, dubbed the 'party for progress,' has been hijacked by simple and narrow-minded, self-serving knaves, bent on putting the party into disrepute, while the intellectual constituents sit back and try to cover up.

It is better for the party to let it all out and come clean to the Jamaican people before the haemorrhage of the decent, law-abiding, progressive and patriotic people from it begins in earnest, while the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), gets more ammunition as the undecided in the electorate make up their minds against the PNP.

To that end, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller should have admitted meeting with Trafigura executives as soon as the story broke. Firings, restitutions and explanations of previous explanations, denials and admissions will not do. The PNP needs a SWAT team from within its ranks to rescue the party and the country from those hijackers, then remove the tares from among the wheat. This Trafigura fiasco is only serving to reinforce the view of the average man on the street that the politician is always power hungry, arrogant and corrupt.

I am, etc.,

MICHAEL SPENCE

Micspen2@hotmail.com

P.O. box 630

Liguanea, Kingston 6