Newsboyphil Reporting from Kingston, Jamaica

Simpson Miller Fears Conspirary against her


PortiaSimpson Miller has pleaded with People’s National Party delegates not to be tempted to be bribed against voting for her in the party’s leadership contest.

Her plea came after key campaign workers had claimed that PNP supporters had been paid not to attend her rally in Morant Bay by criminals worried that if she succeeds PJ Patterson in April they will be targeted by Simpson MIller.

‘I am beseeching you not to allow others to pay for not voting for Portia,’ Simpson Miller said in a speech in front of a statue of the national hero, Paul Bogle, outside the Morant Bay courthouse, in the eastern parish of St Thomas.

Bogle, a Baptist deacon, in 1865 led a rebellion of recently freed slaves seeking better conditions in colonial Jamaica. But the uprising was brutally put down and hundreds of people hanged.

Simpson Miller invoked the memory of Bogle in her campaign to become leader of the PNP and prime minister of Jamaica, telling supporters that it was of symbolic importance that she started the home leg of the campaign in the same section of the island that he launched his rebellion.

But she suggested that there were powerful forces that wanted, including to the point of paying bribes, to stop her march to Jamaica House.

A populist politician who lost to Patterson in the PNP’s leadership contest in 1992, Simpson Miller is this time facing three challengers, the most formidable being the security minister, Dr Peter Phillips, who has the backing of most of the party machinery.

Also in the race is the finance minister, Dr Omar Davies, as well as former cabinet minister and PNP vice-president Dr Karl Blythe.

Opinion polls show Simpson Miller the overwhelming favourite in the contest, but there is no certainty that this will translate into delegate votes.

In fact, her campaign has raised the issue of the quality of the delegates’ list, fearing that other candidates have established bogus delegates to ensure voting support.

However, the PNP secretariat has insisted that the list of a little over 4,000 delegates will be clean.

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