As the People's National Party (PNP) contemplates its next steps, its only surviving former president, P.J. Patterson, has stressed the need to rebuild and repackage the 71-year-old party.

"This is a time when we are not at the helm of leading the affairs of the country, but we must not lose our faith and we must not lose our purpose. It is, instead, a time for renewal of our energy and of our purpose," Patterson said.

He was speaking Friday at the first day of the party's annual conference at its Old Hope Road headquarters.

Patterson added: "This is a time for rebuilding the national alliance which Norman Manley established in 1938. It is a time for the bakers, the cooks, the businessmen, the farmers ... the musicians ... the carpenters ... . It is time for the People's National Party to rebuild that great indivisible and unconquerable alliance."

recruiting new members

Patterson suggested ways the party could go about recruiting new members. He said that each member should make it his or her daily task to recruit a new member.

"I am struck, as I move around quietly, by the people who are asking, what can we do to help our party?" Patterson said. "I am saying to each of you, make it a mission, make it a task. Each day, recruit one person to membership and get that one person to recruit another. Let it be like a chain letter, and if you do that, believe you me, with all the attempts to destroy and distort, you will return."

President of the PNP, Portia Simpson Miller, wants to put Jamaica under the umbrella of the party's Progressive Agenda.

"No matter the opposition and cynicism about the Progressive Agenda, no matter what, we will succeed ... . We will not be deterred from our mission. We must stay this course together. What we need, now more than ever, is all hands on deck," Simpson Miller said on Friday .

The annual conference continued yesterday with a business session and will culminate with a public session at the National Arena today.