SamudaHoward Campbell, Gleaner Writer
AFTER WITNESSING verbal spats and members coming to blows at past Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) conferences, general secretary Karl Samuda is looking forward to its renewal, which is scheduled to end today at the National Arena.
For the combative Samuda, the latest JLP conference is significant. It is the first time in years that it has not been overshadowed by internal squabbling and rumours of threats to the party's leadership.
According to Samuda, the JLP is peaking at the right time.
"Our machinery is coming together beautifully, I estimate that we are 80 per cent ready to face the electorate," he told The Sunday Gleaner at his constituency office at Red Hills Road, last week. "We have some fine-tuning to do in terms of candidates, but by the end of the first quarter of next year all our candidates will be in place."
UPBEAT MOOD
Several factors contributed to Samuda's upbeat mood. Although a recent Market Research poll showed the JLP in a virtual dead heat with the governing People's National Party, he says it is the party's aggression on national issues such as the Sandals Whitehouse mess, that satisfies him most.
He was one of the persons who raised the matter of Government cronyism with the Westmoreland project, in Parliament, forcing Prime Minister P.J. Patterson to establish a committee to investigate the Opposition's charges.
Not all the polls, however, have been favourable to the JLP. Another
Market Research finding showed party leader, Bruce Golding, failing to click with the populace almost six months after he was elected to replace Edward Seaga.
Samuda says he is not surprised by that report, giving the groundwork Golding has been putting in to ensure the JLP has exorcised its demons.
"The leader has focussed internally on ensuring the team presents itself in a united way the next time we go out there," he said. "He has been consolidating a deliberate programme of activities at all levels on how to interact with each other."
Samuda, who has been involved in his share of JLP scrapes over the years, believes the party is close to shedding its negative image. "You can hardly point to an area of discontent," he said.
DISCONTENT
Yet, discontent is what the JLP was known for in the last 10 years of Seaga's 30-year tenure. His so-called 'One Don' leadership style disillusioned many including Samuda and Golding who, for differing reasons, left the party.
Samuda was actually expelled from the JLP in 1992. He joined the PNP that year and eventually became state minister in the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce; after almost three years with the PNP, he was back with the JLP.
He was in danger of becoming a pariah after the 1997 General Election. In the run-up to the national polls, the PNP used a promotional clip of Samuda blasting Seaga and describing the JLP as a party of 'wimps, yes men and lackeys', while on a PNP platform. The ad was effective, but Samuda was still one of 13 victors for the JLP in that election, retaining his North Central St. Andrew seat which he first won in 1980.
Of Portugese-Jewish stock, Samuda was born at Espeut Avenue in St. Andrew.
He says he left Jamaica in his early teens for Canada where he completed high school, and earned a degree in business from the University of Miami.
On his return to Jamaica, he worked with Alcan and Industrial Gases Limited. He says he was turned off by Prime Minister Michael Manley's socialist policies in the 1970s, and first ran for the JLP in 1976, contesting the North West St. Andrew seat in 1976, losing to the PNP's Ken McNeill.
APPOINTED STATE MINISTER
Four years later when the JLP swept to power, he won the North Central St.Andrew seat which he has held since.
He was appointed state minister in the commerce ministry in the Seaga administration.
At 63, Samuda says he has no ambition to lead the JLP. He considers himself an elder in the party and says he is pleased at the level of interest shown in it by young people and women.
He says persons attending the conference will definitely feel the wind of change blowing through the JLP.
"We have to have senior leadership to guide these young people, that's important," said Samuda. "But the face of the labour party will be changing by the time we go to the polls."
