Electrifying speakers light up JLP’s ‘election conference’

Prime Minister Andrew Holness came to yesterday’s 81st annual conference of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) with a warehouse of giveaways, leaving most supporters with wide smiles as they heard of a coming reduction on electricity bills, $20,000 for individuals not captured in the tax net, amnesty and debt reduction for customers of the National Water Commission (NWC), and a subsidy for rural school children.

The promises came in a 51-minute address in which the JLP leader unveiled bonanzas to the thousands who gathered inside and outside the National Arena in what amounted to ‘part two’ of the Government’s and party’s policy announcements going into the 2025 General Election. Part one was delivered last Tuesday at Jamaica House, where Holness made a policy statement announcing the ‘Next Chapter’ in moving the nation towards “inclusive growth”.

Yesterday, it was clear to all in attendance that it was an election conference, and speaker after speaker stuck to a message urging supporters to “deliver a third-term victory to Holness”.

From the party’s youth ambassador to conference chairman Desmond McKenzie, and all speakers in between, the message was that the JLP has done too much to be denied a third term.

Montego Bay Mayor Richard Vernon said the Government had reduced the massive $7-billion debt it inherited to the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) and had put itself in a better position to demand better service from the utility company for the Jamaican people. After him was St Andrew West Rural Member of Parliament Juliet Cuthbert Flynn, clearly part of the party’s attack team, who referred to Opposition Leader Mark Golding as ‘Markie British’, a consistent theme in speeches she has made leading up to yesterday’s event.

“Our leader is strong, our leader is active, our leader is about serving your interest,” she told the conference. “But there’s another man called Markie British, and he is a man who believes in holding chains around the neck of black people, an’ a nuh me seh so. A him a tek picha a hold chain roun di Rasta man neck.”

Her reference was to a slave chain skit at a 2023 constituency conference for which Golding, a white Jamaican with British ancestry, received backlash. Golding was born in Jamaica but received British citizenship through the ancestry of his father, the late Professor Sir John Golding. He has since renounced his British citizenship.

Agriculture Minister Floyd Green, in an electrifying 11-minute speech to the conference, said the difference between the People’s National Party (PNP) and the JLP was one of leadership.

According to Green, the PNP identified “the problem” but did nothing about it. Citing the examples of the farm roads, which needed to be fixed, he said the JLP had fixed more than 200 farm roads to assist farmers transporting goods to markets and points where they could be accessed. Turning to the issue of land titles, he said the JLP had issued more than 10,000 land titles, with 6,000 handed out in 2022 alone.

‘I understand the frustration’

While acknowledging frustration among the populace, he pleaded with supporters to not dump “the baby with the bath water”.

“Listen, I understand the frustration. A lot of us feel like the issue should have already been dealt with, whether it be water challenges, whether it be road, but I say to you, don’t throw out the baby with the bath water,” he begged supporters.

“We have come too far for us to turn back. We have worked too hard for us to go back. Andrew Holness has done too much for this country for us to make it go to waste under the other side. So we will not switch out our representatives for some people that now because them a run election them start call to people,” Green said to rousing applause from the crowd.

In the meantime, Juliet Holness’ called out women in government and public life who assumed positions under the Holness administration, seeking to remind the crowd that the JLP celebrated women. She singled out Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, Fayval Williams, and Olivia Grange as women in government but also noted the appointment of the first woman to head the Court of Appeal.

She was followed by Johnson Smith, the foreign affairs minister, who spoke little on matters of her ministerial portfolio except to say that Jamaica has been able to take the lead on a number of United Nations initiatives.

However, she accused the PNP of “dividing the diaspora” and seeking to embarrass Jamaica in the international arena. She also spoke on crime but promised that the JLP “would deliver more in the third term”.

The lightbulb moment would then come with St Catherine North Eastern MP Kerensia Morrison.

In a riveting nine-minute speech, delivered with superb diction and using the vernacular to even greater effect, Morrison spoke of programmes that were available to persons for their upliftment. She said the JLP was the party that was “connecting people to their dreams” and “standing on a strong record of performance”.

“Ours is a record of one of the greatest access to our young people through skills training, employment and opportunities … . For those who don’t know, or claim not to know, or those who may want to distort the truth, it is this Government that is making skills training affordable, for all Jamaicans, when we removed the enrolment fees from HEART, thereby providing skills training free of cost … ,” she told the conference.

She spoke to the LIFT and Sixth-Form Pathways programme, the removal of the requirement for guarantors to receive student loans, and assistance from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). She said the JLP connected persons to their dreams and aspirations and that the PNP was all talk and were secretly accessing programmes while criticising them.

Morrison challenged the PNP to “duh dis and beat we. Put it deh”.

She said she wanted supporters to match up the two parties on governance and achievements while arguing that there was no match. She told those gathered at the conference that the JLP would not allow the PNP to “clown” Jamaica, urging the Opposition to instead take on a role in the Suarez Brothers Circus that is currently in Kingston.

The moment was not lost on the crowd, who reacted with loud cheers.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com