Ban them' - Decision on political meetings pending

Published in the Jamaica Gleaner: Friday | August 31, 2007

Mark Beckford, Staff Reporter

Facing a ban on campaigning in three parishes, the two major political parties yesterday began seeking new venues to stage their respective final public meetings before the general elections on Monday.

This came after a recommendation was made to Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas that a ban be placed on rallies and motorcades in Kingston and St. Andrew, and St. Catherine.

The recommendation, put forward during a meeting at the Election Centre, came about as a result of what the centre called the rising level of violent acts that are being linked to politics.

The rise in violence was fuelled when, on Wednesday night, a convoy of about three cars carrying the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) candidate for Eastern St. Andrew, Dr. St. Aubyn Bartlett, was shot up in the community of Tavern, shortly after 8 o'clock. Three persons were reportedly shot, including a woman who was travelling in a car with Dr. Bartlett.

JLP General Secretary Karl Samuda labelled the shooting an assassination attempt on the life of Dr. Bartlett and said it was a sign of desperation by the PNP.

Organisation of attacks

In a release yesterday, the JLP also claimed there had been an organisation of attacks against them "in the last 24 hours", which they said had claimed five lives, including a policeman, Special Corporal Gareth Smith.

However, the police have confirmed the attacks in which four and not five persons were killed, they have not indicated whether they were political.

People's National Party (PNP) General Secretary Donald Buchanan, in his usual acerbic manner, scoffed at the JLP's claims.

He accused the JLP of being, rather than the victims, the creators of the violence.

"We have seen the evidence of the orchestration of the internal JLP machinery at work where they perform these acts of violence and blame it on the PNP," Mr. Buchanan told The Gleaner.

Both the PNP, in Cross Roads, St. Andrew, and the JLP, at Coronation Market in downtown Kingston, had scheduled public meetings for the Corporate Area on Saturday. However, if the Police Commissioner upholds the recommendation, those meetings will have to be cancelled. Up to news time, both parties had not yet decided their next course of action in relation to their public meetings.

Though ruing the need for such a decision, Mr. Buchanan said the party would abide by the Police Commissioner's ruling.

"We had pulled all our campaigns over the Emancipation and Independence period in observance of national celebrations and the period after the passage of Hurricane Dean, therefore we lost two weeks of campaigning," he said. "We had planned to complete campaigning over these three days, so this has affected us."

JLP Information Spokesman Dwight Nelson however said the cancellation would not affect the preparation of the party, as it would continue the door-to-door campaigning by its candidates.

"We haven't decided where we are going to meet as yet, it is a very fluid situation and our campaign team is meeting on the matter," he added.