Raymond Pryce, Contributor

Pryce

Since May 2002, there has been a permeating consciousness that leadership changes are imminent within the People's National Party (PNP). At his address to supporters who were gathered along Old Hope Road after the results of the 2002 General Elections were known, then party leader P.J. Patterson announced that that was the last time he would lead the party through general elections. The competition for his replacement took on a new dimension from that moment on.

As it has transpired, that dimension has accounted for a sizeable amount of the energies of the officers and members of the party at all levels. In retrospect it has resulted in a baseline 'distraction' that first manifested itself nationally in the 2003 Local Government Elections which the PNP lost. The PNP has lost every national election since that time.

All of us who experienced the last presidential contest would have amassed a body of knowledge of what internal competitions can yield. They are always fraught and fought with mercilessness. In political year 2005-2006 the PNP, while in government, descended into a quadruplet shadow of its singular self. None of us should ever forget the awesome and costly campaigning across the entire island which sadly did less to orientate the population on the accomplishments of successive PNP administrations, but more so showcased the expediently magnified shortcomings of individuals within the movement. No group or organ, committee, commission or affiliate within the party escaped the resultant scalding that the contest generated.

The net effect of that process that culminated in the election of Portia Simpson Miller as party president and ultimately her appointment as Jamaica's seventh prime minister was a decline in the PNP stock and an impaired brand. Persons who spoke on the party's behalf publicly and privately encountered the residual impact of the blistering campaign as difficulties when engaging Jamaica's middle class and "independents" about the advantages of a PNP-led administration. I have often used the illustration that if the PNP were a publicly traded stock in a 21st century marketplace shareholders would have been dumping their shares and consumers would have had no confidence in any product being sold. Almost inevitably therefore the PNP lost the general elections of 2007.

IN WITH THE OLD

Norman Manley - File

Elected in our place was a political party that last held office before the fall of the Berlin Wall, before the proliferation of modern information technologies and when closed markets and price controls were used to keep captive consumers fed on a diet that any one government could stand alone and one don had all the answers. Since that time - without paying too much homage to the myriad of recent poll results the Jamaican consumer has been biting the proverbial bullet and languishing in a protracted state of "buyers' remorse". Since that time as well the rumblings about the stewardship of the PNP by the incumbent leadership had started to become deafening. No one should therefore be truly surprised that Peter Phillips has agreed to challenge Portia Simpson Miller. The surprise has been the overall subdued response from commentators throughout the media that have even tended to question Phillips' right and reason for challenging the party leader. For as her own statements acceded - "any member of the PNP has the right to aspire to any elected position within our movement". And in truth and in fact the time for him to do it is now.

Simpson Miller's rivals often opine that they are dissatisfied with the current leadership of the party. In democracies - such as the PNP's - leadership is not singular. In fact the leadership within the PNP is a multivariate equation inclusive of the general-secretary and deputy general secretaries, the chairman and deputy chairman, the four vice presidents (our constitution does not bestow seniority or rank within the cadre of vice presidents), the treasurer, the legal adviser and beyond them six regional chairpersons and a variety of other officials at the executive, national, parliamentary, regional, constituency, divisional and group levels.

CRITICAL OFFICIAL

The president, therefore, is but one critical official within the leadership of the party. So the questions arise: What is Comrade Phillips challenging? Is it the malaise that has overtaken many within the leadership? Is it the current structure or formula of the leadership? Or is it just the party leader?

Those who know him best explain that Peter Phillips is not a self-absorbed despot. His agenda we are told is to restore the primacy of the values and traditions of the People's National Party - "to defend Norman Manley's PNP". A statement that I must confess makes me somewhat uncomfortable - its use all but implies that our movement must be preserved as if a relic under formaldehyde on a museum shelf; or as the reserve for multi-generational Kingston elites. I accept that the mission of Norman Manley's generation (and of this party) - as articulated in his final address to the Parliament - was to secure political independence for the masses of the people of Jamaica. Well with political independence comes access - so that those who were born without social and economic wealth can, through concerted government policies and personal grit, realise their dreams and matriculate to any office or rank within the party and society on the merit of their toil rather than the coincidence of pedigree, or complexion or of birth. This is the most PNP of our ideals. So, hailing from Craighead, Manchester as I do, and having qualified myself on par with my contemporaries in Europe or North America I would expect that familial pedigree is no longer a precondition for respect within the PNP nor the ability to become its leader. That is my interpretation of Norman Manley's PNP. So clearly Peter Phillips' motive cannot be classist cleansing.

RESTORATION

There are persons who hold office within the PNP as an appendage to their given names who have not done a proper job of work required by their post(s) for several years since being in said position. If Peter Phillips' motive, therefore, is the restoration of a meritocracy within the movement then there is more merit to a challenge than classism connotes. He would inherently therefore have to vouchsafe those persons within his ascendancy that their record provides him with the moral authority and record in fact to stamp out the 'lumpenocracy' that has become mainstream. Recall that many linked to Comrade Phillips currently hold high office within the PNP and are therefore part of its leadership formulation and any deficit therein must be borne by them too. Is the current challenge therefore a challenge to them as well?

Perhaps the question with greatest weight is whether this has become personal contest between Comrades Simpson Miller and Phillips. Personal ambition and its twin, ego, are the most intoxicating of human fuels and can lead to behaviour not normally approved by discerning observers. It is this vein of the current situation that conjures the matter of activist saboteurs. Can the leadership formulation not be augmented by a renewed resolve from those who form it to concentrate their activities and energies for the first time in several years behind one all-inclusive singular movement? Or is it now just a "me or you" conundrum? The burden of proof of motives usually falls on to the challenger.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

I use this very public medium to advise my political mother and father - Comrades Simpson Miller and Phillips - that in so far as my generation of Jamaicans are grateful for your contributions to our collective advancement - yours (neither of you) is not the right to make game of the PNP. The last time around some deeply regrettable behaviour resulted - in fairness - more so from surrogates of both contenders rather than from the contenders themselves. This time around you must both ensure that your ranks are properly audited and that the conduct of your campaigns will redound to the benefit of the party - an institution of national and global relevance and repute. Neither of you should forget that the indigenous Jamaican middle class of recent vintage is currently feeling the tightest squeeze from the fall-out of an ill-prepared administration. It is we - not either of you - who will lose the most if our party is lost in this coming race.

You both enjoy my respect - the PNP retains the value of my support and my membership and the nation my contribution and service and I would like those truths to remain true. All of us have a stake in this coming race - none can truly be on the side lines. National development is not assured through passive observances and hiding in the dark but through sacrifice, participation and advocacy so I call on all comrades to ensure that challenger and the challenged alike understand the unprecedented dangers we face when an unsuited pretender governs our future.

Raymond Pryce is chairman of the Patriots - a group of young professionals affiliated to the People's National Party.