Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter

Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller and Prime Minister Bruce Golding (pictured in this 2005 photo) have agreed to resume the Vale Royal talks. - File

THE VALE Royal talks will soon be resumed as the Opposition People's National Party (PNP) yesterday backed down from its hard-line position, saying it would now dialogue with the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

In a release yesterday, Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller said the PNP was ready to resume bipartisan talks with the Government, with a view to building a better Jamaica.

The news was immediately welcomed by the Bruce Golding administration.

"We welcome this change of heart," Mr. Golding told The Gleaner, through Information Minister Olivia 'Babsy' Grange.

"We feel that much can be achieved through bipartisan collaboration and I will be getting in touch with the Leader of the Opposition to arrange for the resumption of the Vale Royal talks," Mr. Golding said.

Meeks' appraisal report

The PNP's decision to resume the talks came after the officers of the PNP reviewed the Brian Meeks' appraisal report, which was commissioned after the party lost the September 2007 general election.

"We discussed at length the critical nature of the challenges, both global and local, and the impact of these on the Jamaican people," Mrs. Simpson Miller, the party's president, said in the release.

"Consistent with our party's historic tradition of putting Jamaica's interest first, I now stand ready, together with the relevant officers of the People's National Party, to meet with the Hon. Bruce Golding, Prime Minister and Leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, to discuss urgent national issues," she added.

Backed out

The PNP had backed out of bipartisan talks with the JLP after Mr. Golding, speaking at the JLP annual conference in November, quipped that some members might have been suffering from "intellectual depravity" and that it seemed as though "termites have infested their brains".

Mr. Golding, who, on election night, said he was going to build a country based on consensus, later extended an invitation to the Opposition to meet at Vale Royal in a bid to find consensus on the way forward.

The PNP then flatly rejected the invitation. The party's outgoing general secretary, Donald Buchanan, said Mr. Golding was speaking out of "both sides of his mouth" as he used every opportunity to hurl "insults" at the PNP.

The Vale Royal talks, which started during former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson's 14-year reign, have been intended as a means of bringing government and Opposition together to find consensus on critical issues facing the nation.

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com