Gordon-Webley Should Not Have Crossed Floor, Says JLP Supporter

By: Admin

Image caption: Rudolph Brown People’s National Party candidate for St Andrew East Rural Joan Gordon-Webley (right) and supporters campaign in Irish Town on August 23.

AT LEAST one Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) supporter is convinced that Joan Gordon-Webley should not have crossed the political floors to the People’s National Party (PNP).

Eunice Solomon, a resident of St Andrew East Rural, told The Gleaner that she has been a supporter of the JLP for more than five decades.

She sported a green shirt emblazoned with the face of JLP party leader Andrew Holness and a makeshift skirt with the face of Gordon-Webley.

“I speak to Miss Webley, she come to my home and I ask her why she never wait her turn. She seh, ‘Miss Holness fight har out.’ Mi seh, ‘Miss Holness nuh fight yuh out, a yuh fight out yuhself’,” she recalled of a conversation.

Solomon said she would like to see Gordon-Webley return to the JLP, “cause she’s a born Labourite, she’s a ‘shower’ woman”.

The JLP turncoat challenged Holness on a PNP ticket at the polls yesterday. Holness, the incumbent, retained the seat.

But St Andrew East Rural is familiar territory for Gordon-Webley, who held the seat for the JLP from 1980 to 1989.

Since then, she has had a gloomy run at the polls.

In the 1989 election, she lost the seat, and when she returned as an independent candidate in 1993, the voters turned her down.

Returning to the fold of the JLP in 2007, she challenged Maxine Henry-Wilson in St Andrew South Eastern and was beaten.

In 2011, Gordon-Webley went back to St Andrew East Rural on behalf of the JLP to take on the PNP’s Damion Crawford and lost by a 259-vote margin.

She managed to secure 9,375 votes to Crawford’s 9,634.

Solomon cast her vote in the Gordon Town division and declared victory for Holness: “From river to river and bank to bank, Miss Holness a come in.”

“We a go jus’ rejoice, pray and ask God fi mek she guide East Rural, ‘cause East Rural is a very big constituency,” Solomon said of her victory plans.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com