Rescue Jamaica, says Phillips
Published:Monday | September 20, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Edmond Campbell, Senior Staff Reporter
NEWLY APPOINTED national campaign director for the People's National Party (PNP), Dr Peter Phillips, wasted no time yesterday in making an impassioned plea to Comrades to throw their support behind Portia Simpson Miller as the party prepares for any eventuality.
Phillips, who twice unsuccessfully challenged Simpson Miller for the party presidency, encouraged the partisan crowd attending yesterday's closing day of the PNP's 72nd annual conference at the National Arena to forge a united front in order to "rescue" the country from the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).
"We have a party which is a united party. Now is the time when every Comrade needs to come on board and do the job in this mission of rescuing Jamaica," Phillips said.
"No one should hold dem corner and stand back. Jamaica needs to be rescued ... . Even the Labourites are ashamed of the Government that they have," he declared to resounding applause from the thousands who crammed into the arena.
Singing the praises of Simpson Miller, Phillips indicated that the party president was best suited to lead the PNP into the next general election.
"We have the leader best able to restore hope among the Jamaican people and every poll ever taken in Jamaica indicates that our Comrade leader Portia Simpson Miller enjoys the confidence of more Jamaicans than any other political figure in Jamaica at this time," he assured.
He said a major task of the next PNP administration would be the restoration of trust in political life, "and trust between a government and its people".
Crisis of trust
He charged that the Golding administration was facing a crisis of trust.
Phillips pointed out that unions could no longer count on the Government to honour its obligations and contracts.
"If the prime minister can't even tell us who or who is not a member of the JLP, why should we accept his word about anything else ... ?" he declared.
The national campaign director accused the three-year-old Golding administration of displaying arrogance and contempt for the Jamaican people while plunging the country into "devastation and degradation".
Ascribing the name 'Eli' to Golding, the chairman of the PNP Communications Commission charged that "we have seen a government that is prepared to lie to the Parliament, lie to the press and lie to their foreign partners in an effort to obstruct the course of justice and defy the rule of law".