Phyllis Mitchell

HER COLLEAGUES have begun calling her 'tek eh back' and, if crowd support in her North East St. Catherine constituency is anything to go by, then Phyllis Mitchell should very well be on her way back to Parliament.

Accompanied by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, the president of the People's National Party (PNP), and the phenomena within which the party rests its hope for a fifth successive term in government, Mitchell toured sections of the constituency and carried with her a message of hope.

Bad roads an obstacle

Bad roads in many sections of the constituency were an obstacle for the huge motorcade as it rolled through communities like Bonnet, Benbow, Guys Hill and Glengoffe. At almost every stop, Mrs. Simpson Miller restated her government's commitment to education transformation and rural development. She also told the comrades that, on election night, the PNP was going to force Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Bruce Golding to say 'goodbye' to politics once and for all.

"I am going to whip the man," Mrs. Simpson Miller said at a stop in Riversdale.

"I am going to give Bruce Golding a sweet, sweet beating on the 27th," she promised.

In Glengoffe, one man who claimed to be a farmer told The Gleaner that Golding's offering "of pure free dis and free dat a encourage carelessness. A lazy him want wi get lazy and stop work".

Priorto the dissolution of Parliament, the seat was represented by Abe Dabdoub, whom the JLP labelled as a non-performer. He won the seat by a margin of 683 votes in the 2002 polls when 61 per cent of the electorate in St. Catherine North Eastern voted.

Dabdoub is now a member of the PNP contesting the West Portland seat against the JLP's Daryl Vaz.

Won by 30 votes

In the 1997 election, Mitchell beat Dabdoub by 30 votes to retain the seat she had won by a 160-vote margin over Anthony Johnson in 1993. Mitchell had lost out to Johnson in the 1989 elections.

However, after occupying the seat in Parliament for four years, the Supreme Court delivered a judgement that Dabdoub was duly elected in 1997, and not Mitchell.

She is up against JLP first-timer Gregory Mair. One shopkeeper in Glengoffe said she has lived in the community for decades, and that it was the first time she had seen such a huge crowd behind any candidate there.

Mair, she said, was yet to tour the constituency in any major way, which makes it impossible to compare the two.

Judging by the party shirts worn, one thing was clear. At least five vehicles in the motorcade carried people from Robert Pickersgill's neighbouring North West St. Catherine constituency.

A total of 18,289 persons are registered to vote in the constituency, an increase of 2,689 from the 2002 elections.