‘UNSTOPPABLE JLP’ – Holness' Labourities Confident Of Ousting The PNP

By: Gary Spaulding

Image caption:

Led by its Leader Andrew Holness, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) flexed its muscle during a mass rally in Stony Hill in West Rural St Andrew on Monday night as it took aim at the People's National Party (PNP).

Holness brought the climax to a night when platform speaker after platform speaker fired at the PNP from all angles, leaving Labourites clearly energised.

"I am unstoppable; the JLP is unstoppable," declared Holness during the party-like atmosphere in the crowded Stony Hill, hours after he released a statement detailing how he acquired his Beverly Hills house.

It was a night when the PNP's president, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, its campaign director, Dr Peter Phillips and general secretary, Paul Burke were primary targets.

POT SHOTS AT PHILLIPS

Phillips had the biggest bull's eye on his back with JLP platform speakers, taking pot shots at the man who has served as minister of finance and planning for the past four years.

Even as JLP stalwart, Delroy Chuck, describing himself as the lawyer for Holness' wife, Juliet, emotionally called for Phillips' resignation and suggested that awards granted to him recently, including The Gleaner's Man of the Year for 2015, be withdrawn, it was Holness who had last blast.

"The People's National Party is a desperate organisation," declared Holness. "But we are up and we are going to stay up, up, up," as music and Labourites with noisy vuvuzelas reacted.

"All of this smokescreen to sully the name of my wife's family shows the hypocrisy of the PNP, that it is the main orchestrator of gutter politics," he declared.

Holness claimed that for the first time, real issues are being introduced on the political campaign to which the PNP had no answers.

"The PNP come with smear campaign to distract you by trying to draw me out to explain about house," charged Holness. "I will not allow the PNP to do that to you, to distract you from what you should be focusing on."

HYPOCRISY AND LIES

Citing the recent sand-mining imbroglio in Negril, Westmoreland, involving contradicting directives from two government ministers, that he said cost overseas investors millions, Holness charged that the PNP Government was engaged in hypocrisy and lies.

"They have the nerve to make claims about how easy it is to do business in Jamaica," said Holness. "Talk about step up the progress. Dem must step aside now," declared Holness as the hit song of the same name from, Beres Hammond blasted from the nearby sound system.

Holness suggested that while not all Jamaicans will be rich, no one in Jamaica has to be poor.

"All the PNP talked about for 10 years is how it loves the poor. The poor don't need lovers, sympathisers, or pity. What the poor need is a deliverer and a champion for prosperity."

Declaring that 'Mama P' now stands for 'Mama Poverty', Holness said, "You notice the PNP don't talk about poor because the young people no longer taking such talk.

"The mother of the poor is now the grandmother of the poor and rendered irrelevant," charged Holness.

"They want you to be poor so they can control you ... we want to create wealth and prosperity in your life. So we have already defeated the ideology of poverty," he added.

gary.spaulding@gleanerjm.com