Decisive Leadership needed in the Peoples National Party

Over the weekend, the Opposition Party, the Peoples National Party, voted to return Mrs. Portia Simpson-Miller as its Leader. The Party’s Constitution makes the Annual Conference the Party’s highest decision making forum and requires that the term of its elected Officers, including the President is one year. The Constitution also requires that elections (by delegates) must be held every year at Conference. In its first 69 years, the delegates dutifully returned the incumbent President unopposed. Elections for Party Leader have been held 3 times when an incumbent has retired (Norman Manley in 1969; Michael Manley in 1992; and P.J. Patterson in 2006). However in its 70th year, and for the first time, the incumbent was challenged.

This democratic notion of challenging an incumbent Leader is new to the Party and predictably has not been taken kindly by the incumbent or by those supporting her. The result has been a split in the party as Mrs. Simpson-Miller and her supporters have wrongfully confused democracy with trying to “beat her down” and “mash up the party”. We have witnessed the strident vice presidential races in the PNP where losers continued to work in the party. However there appears to be one code of practice for the Vice Presidential race and another for the Presidential race.

Now that the elections are over and Mrs. Simpson-Miller has been returned as President, where should the PNP go from here? Mrs. Simpson-Miller MUST meet with Dr. Phillips one-on-one and work out differences and agree what is best for the party. Mrs. Simpson-Miller and her supporters must also recognize and accept that it is OK, and in the spirit of democracy, to be challenged. Dr. Phillips MUST let his supporters know that the campaign is over, the party must move on and that there are more commonalities with, than differences between, other members of the party.

Mrs. Simpson-Miller has admitted that she erred on ascendancy to the Prime Minister in March 2007 by keeping Mr. Patterson’s team in place rather than making the required changes in the best interest of the Government and of Jamaica. In other words, faced with an easy choice of doing what people wanted her to do and with a difficult choice of doing what was right, she chose the former and attributed that to her loss in the General Elections. A key tenet of great leadership is to take decisive and tough decisions, even when it is unpopular. Mrs. Simpson-Miller chose the easy way out in March 2006 and is now faced with another choice. This time she must demonstrate decisive leadership and do what is best for the party. The choice is hers and, unlike what many commentators are saying, she has a free hand whether or not anyone wants to voluntary step aside. The Party Leader should take a leaf out of Captain Horace Burrell’s book who did not wait for Professor Simoes to step aside, but exhibited decisive leadership in taking a tough decision in the best interest of Jamaica’s football.