Opposition Leader and People’s National Party (PNP) President, Mark Golding, is urging some comrades to desist from uttering comments in the public sphere or on social media that damage the reputation of the party.
Golding said the focus of all party supporters should be set on winning the next general elections, which is constitutionally due by 2025.
“If you are going to say something that does not take the People’s National Party one step further to going to Jamaica House, kibba yuh mout and shut up!” declared Golding sternly.
The PNP leader’s use of the popular Jamaican phrase appeared to have resonated well with comrades at Sunday’s party meeting in South West St Catherine, as scores of them erupted in wild cheers and waving of orange flags.
The Opposition PNP has been dogged by purported disunity, which seemingly intensified since its humiliating defeat in the September 2020 General Elections, with an intense internal contest in November that year between Golding and Lisa Hanna to replace Dr Peter Phillips as party’s president, further opening major wounds.
Some comrades on social media who favour the Phillips-Hanna camp have branded themselves as the ‘resistance’, and have often openly criticised Golding and other members of the party’s leadership, including Senator Peter Bunting.
Bunting and his Rise United campaign failed to unseat Phillips as PNP president back in 2019.
In borrowing aspects of a popular Jamaican slang, Golding admitted that some PNP supporters “love to wash their dirty linen in public to much”.
He added that “We love to chat one another in social media to much”.
In further laying out his argument for such behaviour by some PNP members to come to an end, Golding suggested that the energy he is feeling on the ground for the PNP had not been felt since 2011 when, at that time, Portia Simpson-Miller was gaining momentum of the ground.
She went on to win the national polls in December of that year.
“The people are ready. They want to see us (the PNP) in power. They want us to do the right thing by them,” Golding asserted.
