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Posts: 1164
Jan 25 06 9:30 AM
Quote:The primacy of the party published: Wednesday | January 25, 2006 Delroy Chuck THE PNP puts the party above everything else. The national interest may be important but the party's interest is most important. In everything it does, whether in the award of contracts, the appointment of persons to sensitive national posts or the formulation of policies for development, the party's interest comes first. Even in the selection of the next Prime Minister, the national welfare is secondary to the party's interest.Compare the changes of Prime Minister when the JLP is in power to the present comedy in the PNP government. The PNP delegates, instead of the elected MPs, determine the new Prime Minister. When Donald Sangster and Hugh Shearer were elected as Prime Minister, the JLP MPs followed the letter of the Jamaican Constitution and chose the person who had the support of the government parliamentary majority. Interestingly, Sir Alexander Bustamante remained as JLP Leader during the prime ministerial tenure of both Sangster and Shearer. The JLP did not go to the party to choose the next Prime Minister; it relied on the constitutional arrangements that governed the national interests. UNLIKELY SCENARIO Now, we know that Peter Phillips has the support of the majority of MPs on the government side but the PNP has decreed that whoever gains the plurality support of less than 4,000 PNP delegates will be the president of the party and the next Prime Minister. Even if the new president does not have the majority support of the government MPs in Parliament, (s)he will become Prime Minister, which makes a mockery of Section 70 of the Jamaican Constitution. What happens if, in September 2006, another PNP president is elected at their annual conference? Will there be another change of Prime Minister, to be consistent with the present decree? And, such a scenario is not unlikely!Under the present PNP constitution, the contender for president who gets a plurality of delegate votes, not a majority, as in the JLP and most other political arrangements, will emerge as the next president. It means that one of the four contenders may be elected with less than 30 per cent of the delegates. There may well be 70 per cent disgruntled delegates who are coerced to accept the will of a minority, at least until NEXT TIME. That next time could come as early as the next annual conference in September, when presidential elections are held.Common sense and history are against the present farcical process in the PNP but the party comes first. As a simple matter of common sense, the party should recognise that the country cannot, or should not, accept a president and Prime Minister that cannot even command a majority support in his or her own party. To foist such a person on the Jamaican people is a clear demonstration of the party's contempt of what the rest of Jamaica may think or demand. ESCHEW SLAVERY In 1860, if the newly-formed Republican Party in the U.S.A. had used the process of plurality of delegates, the great American President Abraham Lincoln would be denied to the American people and to the monumental struggle to eschew slavery in the U.S.A. At the 1860 Republican Convention in Chicago, four contenders vied for the party's presidential nominee. On the first and second ballots, Lincoln came second to William H. Seward, who was not only better known but had greater political experience and government administration. Yet, Lincoln emerged winner on the third ballot and immediately gained the unanimous support of all the delegates, as all the states switched votes to a candidate who was little known outside his home of Springfield, Illinois.In this bitter PNP race, where charges are flying everywhere, accusation of vote buying and use of state funds to manage campaign, can the winner who emerges with less than a majority support command the respect of Parliament and the nation? Just imagine if (s)he gains only 30 per cent of the delegates, then inside and outside of Parliament that Prime Minister will have great difficulty uniting, inspiring and leading. Immediately, the call and need for a general election will become imminent, as the political instability may be too much for the nation to bear.
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