By Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate Editor 
Mrs. Hyacinth Bennett, head of the National Democratic Movement and Mrs. Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas, founder of the United People's Party.
Following is the final of a three-part series on the issues and the personalities of the 2002 general election campaign. Part two appeared on Wednesday.
HYACINTH BENNETT AND THE NDM-NJA
MRS. HYACINTH Bennett, widowed, with four children, is described as being "very warm and friendly but because she is a very direct person and she speaks her mind very clearly, some people might feel a little taken aback in interacting with her".
She has a fight on her hands, struggling to keep the National Democratic Movement (NDM) alive in a tradition that says third parties do not survive.
The founder and president of the Hydel Group of Schools, Ferry, St. Catherine, she was the principal of Wolmer's Preparatory School, Kingston, for 12 years. She has written several educational books. She is a graduate of Bethlehem Teachers' College, Western Carolina University, USA, and the UWI, Mona, and holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees.
From the point of view of the National Democratic Movement-New Jamaica Alliance, the most important issue of the election campaign is the Constituency Development Fund which calls for five per cent of the national budget being allocated equally to the 60 Members of Parliament.
The NDM-NJA sees national unity as being critical to the survival of the nation.
Mrs. Bennett:
"It cannot be that when one party comes in power, then therefore everything goes back to square one. I think the difficulties and the challenges that Jamaica faces are well known, I don't need to give a lengthy litany of them. I think what we are saying in the New Jamaica Alliance though is that the time has come for political parties, for example, to set aside the personal agendas, the narrow consideration based on party and to set aside the hot party pursuit and to see if we can come together in collaboration, to see if we can lift the national agenda from the quicksand of the tribal politics and to see if in collaboration, gaining consensus we can together put Jamaica first.
"What we have been having pretty much is the elevation of party importance and party priorities over nation's welfare and nation's progress. What we are saying, the time has come for us to stand in solidarity for Jamaica and we the New Jamaica Alliance, if you notice the New Jamaica Alliance is Jamaica's first example of political unity and that's why we are saying that although change is possible, real change is possible, no one organisation, no one group is going to be able to effect this change and that is why we are calling for collaboration and working together with others. The time has really come for us to be in search of the appropriate skills and the energies and to combine them in pursuit of real change for Jamaica..."
ANTONNETTE HAUGHTON-CARDENAS AND THE UPP
Mrs. Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas, attorney-at-law and former talk show host, is founder and president of the United People's Party. Passionate, outspoken, plain spoken, voluble. Dramatic! Expressive of face. She doesn't mince words. She is a fierce defender of the things she feels strongly about and, indeed, she feels strongly about a great many things. She expresses those views loudly, softly, dramatically, rapid fire, in the Queen's English and in the Jamaican vernacular - all in the same sentence.
Born on August 29, 1954 in St. Mary, in the constituency in which she is running she got her high school education at St. Hugh's and Excelsior in Kingston. She gained the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Government at the UWI, Mona, and also studied law at the UWI and was called to the Bar in 1979. After that she worked as a legal officer with the Ministry of Social Security. From 1980 to 1991 she operated a private law practice covering her native parish of St. Mary.
She then returned to Kingston where she joined Lord Anthony Gifford as a partner in the law firm Gifford, Haughton & Thompson. She is now Senior Counsel at the law firm Haughton & Associates and until recently was host of Hotline, the talk show on Radio Jamaica. Described by persons who know her well as a champion of the disfranchised, she has made human rights a personal crusade.
In 1994 Mrs. Haughton-Cardenas married a Cuban professor and businessman who was then a diplomat and she has a son.
Q: What for the United People's Party are the issues of the campaign?
Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas: Education, tribalism, to teach our people that it's all right to disagree - 'Mi Labourite brethren, mi love you! You know. Everything safe'. So that we can begin to treat with those who see things differently. We can only do it through action, through how we treat our opponents on the street and that arguments don't get really ugly.
"It also means for us that Jamaica needs to understand that it needs renewal and younger governance. The two gentlemen who lead us if they were in the government service they would have had to retire. All the people they employ at their age, would have to retire and the time has come for renewal and new governance. For us also, you know, it is about service; it is about the privatisation of everything. If your child is sick and you don't have any money the child must die. Let's call it. And that applies to health in our country and access to services for the poor. The issues of poverty and dispossession are real issues and we do not back from them. We take on board the issues of poverty and dispossession and the need to deal with the issues that dog the poorest among us who are the majority of Jamaicans. So, education, health, rural development to stop this great drift into urban Jamaica. Rural development, poverty and access to services by ordinary people.
"As woman the issues that touch and concern us is woman. Why can't we have our children maintained. Why is it so difficult to insist that men must support their children and Jamaican women are not amoebas and don't have unicellular reproduction.
"Issues of violence in the home. Issues of sexual harassment on the job. Jamaica is a country where you can harass a woman and fire her and she can't do nutten. There is no law to protect us against sexual harassment by the powerful jacketed predators of this nation.
"And we need protection from this and we need a sense of justice - justice that the ordinary man in Jamaica will fell that if he complains against this system there really is an attempt to address his concerns. I think those are the issues and I think those are the everyday issues for all Jamaicans."
And so just now the proverbial Fat Lady is powdering her cheeks. Peering into her make-up mirror. Dabbing her brows. Pursing her lips. Adjusting her dress at the waist and the bosom. Waiting to go on the national stage of Jamaica - to sing. For one party, maybe "One more time with feeling". For another, maybe, "You know, I don't love you no more".
For the UPP, maybe, it will be: "For the first time at last." For the NJA-NDM it could very well be, "At last, for the first time."
The hope is that Jamaica and Jamaicans will come out the winners and forever champions after the Fat Lady sings on October 16, 2002.
