Dawn Ritch, Contributor
THE APRIL Stone Poll asked the question "Which political leader would you like to see become Prime Minister after the next General Election?"
The results were Edward Seaga 31.9 per cent, P. J. Patterson 24.4 per cent, Portia Simpson Miller 4.8 per cent, none of them 2.9 per cent, Bruce Golding 1.9 per cent, Dr. Peter Phillips 1.4 per cent, Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas 0.8 per cent, Don't Know 31.9 per cent.
This shows not only that Edward Seaga has widened his lead over P.J. Patterson, but confirms that Mr. Patterson as Prime Minister and president of the PNP has become deeply unpopular in the country at large.
Portia Simpson Miller's and Dr. Peter Phillip's results are the ones, however, behind which hang the sordid tale of political intrigue and political blood-letting currently going on within the PNP Government. It threatens the national interest.
Mr. Patterson's unpopularity has been a recent feature of polls everywhere, and this calamity has not been lost upon his political colleagues. The possible successor as president of the PNP, has been assiduously promoted by the Government as Dr. Peter Phillips, now Minister of National Security.
Indeed one could say that making Peter Phillips president of the party has become the overriding obsession of PNP Government's so-called "best minds". This mission is wholeheartedly supported by Dr. Omar Davies, Minister of Finance who along with Dr. Phillips, Dr. Paul Robertson and Mrs. Maxine Henry Wilson (M.A.), all of whom, because of their academic qualifications can regard themselves as solidly occupying the premier rank as the intellectual leadership of the People's National Party.
A new PNP affiliate "The Patriots" was therefore formed early last year to promote the intellectual wing and in response to the strong public profile of G2K as a body of capable young JLP advisers to the Opposition Leader, Mr. Edward Seaga. The Patriots comprise the cream of young PNP intellectuals.
Donovan Nelson is the president of the Patriots. It must be noted that he is also chief co-ordinator for the Minister of National Security, and works out of that office. The general secretary of the Patriots is Christopher Brown, who is also policy director for the Minister of National Security, Dr. Peter Phillips.
At the time when the Patriots was formed, Dr. Phillips was Minister of Transport, and the new president and general secretary were then currently employed as special assistants to that Minister. Where he goes, it seems they go as well. Is this Government policy or party politics, or are they both one and the same?
The Donovan Nelsons, Chris-topher Browns and Kern Spencer, general secretary of the PNPYO, are part of a new breed of highly educated PNP activists. Mr. Spencer is also parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of National Security.
Since parliamentary secretaries are prime ministerial appointments there ought to be no need to ask where Mr. Patterson's affections lie. He has given Dr. Phillips not only the best and most richly-funded ministerial appointments, but no less a person than the general secretary of the PNPYO as parliamentary secretary in that ministry.
On the other hand Mrs. Simpson Miller was hauled out of the Ministry of Labour and the power base this provided, and put into Tourism which has consistently been underfunded over the years by Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies. Most recently sources have leaked steady reports to media that the Jamaica Tourist Board is wasteful and lacks transparency. Since the charges further muddy the prospects of the PNP's fourth term, any reasonable person must conclude that neither was this any priority.
The priority for the intellectual wing of the PNP Government and its ministerial political activists is simply to make sure that Dr. Peter Phillips is in the right place at the right time when Mr. Patterson steps down. The next priority is to ensure that Mrs. Simpson Miller is nowhere to be seen, and that anybody who might effectively support her is eliminated.
This is why Dr. Karl Blythe's resignation was accepted by the Prime Minister. In any run-off between Simpson Miller and Phillips, Dr. Blythe would support Mrs. Simpson Miller. The four PNP vice-presidents, each controlling significant blocks of delegates are Mrs. Simpson Miller, Dr. Peter Phillips, Dr. Karl Blythe and Mr. Robert Pickersgill. Mr. Pickergill's support for Mrs. Simpson Miller is well-known and he is not thought to have any interest in the presidency.
Once the news however, began to circulate in political circles, both PNP and JLP, that Blythe had decided that if he couldn't become president, he would support her, his fate was sealed. It was sealed by pure party politics, and not by any negative report on his ministerial performance.
Some houses were built in the Operation Pride/NHDC Scandal, even though at the most astronomical cost. Not all the housing schemes built proved dangerous and had to be abandoned. The report does, however, recommend a forensic audit of two or three schemes. What did Phillip Paulwell leave behind after his INTECH Fund scandal? Certainly no houses, no jobs either, only a tangle of litigation and unpaid bills. A wisp of smoke, that's all.
So why has only one resignation been accepted? Because Mr. Paulwell has no significant block of delegate votes to give Mrs. Simpson Miller, and even if he had he would gladly give them to Dr. Peter Phillips.
Where does PNP President and Prime Minister P. J. Patterson figure in all the political manoeuvring going on? If Drs. Phillip and Davies are the intellectual wing of the party, then Mr. Paul Burke, the powerful Region Three stalwart, is the ideological heart of that institution.
Leftist all his life, he has now stepped to the centre. Capping the last three years on radio when he became defined as the public conscience of a PNP that has forgotten the poor and its connection to the people, Paul Burke recently gave a devastating condemnation of Mr. Patterson's leadership of the party itself.
Any reasonable person would conclude from these remarks that Mr. Patterson is thought to be in the hands of a small clique. From the evidence of the ministerial preferments offered over the years, and untrammelled authority given, we may safely assume that Dr. Phillips gets the Prime Minister's nod for future presidency of the PNP, along with that of Dr. Vin Lawrence who is regarded as the power behind the throne in the party. In the meantime it cannot be argued that Mr. Paulwell is any less deserving of being sacked than Dr. Blythe. That Mr. Paulwell still has a seat in Cabinet exposes that the sacking of Blythe was sheer political expediency, dressed up as accountability. According to a group of PNP activists who pushed for and celebrated Blythe's removal. It was a case of "One down, and one to go." But they weren't talking about Paulwell, rather Mrs. Simpson Miller.
As a consequence of raw politics therefore, tourism, the island's number one foreign exchange earner is to continue to be starved of funds. Yet the very recently appointed new Minister of Water and Housing, Mr. Donald Buchanan, is to be given more money to waste, and tourism must continue to wither away.
Dr. Peter Phillips was Minister of Transport and Works until recently, and everybody said what a great ministerial performer he was. Now that he is Minister of National Security all that's happening is that he has made no difference.
It will be remembered that Dr. Phillips, a man well-schooled in theory, took some persuading before he left Transport for Security. Now that he's gone it seems he left a suicide bomb for his successor Bobby Pickersgill in a brand-new municipal bus system losing a million dollars a day.
Now the Minister of Finance latterly gives the Ministry of Tourism US$2.5 million with pointed miserliness.
Hotel mogul Mr. "Butch" Stewart now joins the denunciation of the JTB, and confidently tries to swim against the current and the opinion coming out of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association.
The public must note that the JTB recently put US$1.3 million in co-op advertising money for Air Jamaica Vacations. The Minister of Finance has just given the breathtakingly inadequate sum of US$2.5 million to the JTB. Mr. Stewart wants "a committee of senior industry players... to approve and monitor the expenditure of every single tax dollar that is allocated to the JTB." Who then, is to monitor what Butch gets? Is it Dr. Omar Davies?
Tourism has been consistently underfunded by the Patterson administration, but the trend became more pronounced once the new Minister of Tourism took office. This is indeed a case of party politics becoming Government policy.
Top PNP figures, it would appear, have already conceded defeat in the coming general election, and are therefore concentrating purely on the succession to leadership. From a political point of view, firing a Cabinet Minister is a bad tactic so close to a general election. It takes a well-funded machinery and ruthless dedication to make a 1.4 per cent candidate into the president of anything. Dr. Phillips' supporters are not short of either. One thing is certain, no political party can prevail at the polls which thinks exclusively about internal succession, instead of the interests of the people of Jamaica.
