A re-energised Portia Simpson Miller, president of the People’s National Party, Sunday chastised the Bruce Golding administration for what she dubbed an oversized Cabinet and warned that the Opposition would be watching the Government like hawks.
Addressing thousands of supporters at the party’s 69th annual one-day conference at the National Arena in her first public speech since election night, a combative Simpson Miller said the PNP would be turning the searchlight on the ruling Jamaica Labour Party.
“I am going to let them have sleepless nights … We are going to be their worst nightmare,” the PNP leader declared.
“So them look after themselves first and think we are going to just sit down and sup it. It not going like that, and we want to know how much all of them going to cost. Let me serve notice that we are going to ask every month for the cost and we going to check it up,” she said to cheers from the partisan crowd.
The former Prime Minister also questioned the decision to appoint four ministers to carry out the job that two persons (Dr. Omar Davies and Fitz Jackson) performed under the PNP administration.
Warning the new Government against downsizing in the public sector, Simpson Miller said, “We are watching, because you aren’t putting 31 persons as your executive and then cut the rest of the service, you going to have to cut yourself first.”
The PNP president also questioned the “probity of the minister with responsibility for finance being paid by a financial institution, which he must supervise and regulate”.
Contending that she had nothing against Senator Don Wehby (Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance and Public Service), the PNP president said his appointment “goes to the heart of transparency and accountability of a government”.
Member of Parliament-elect for Central Manchester, Peter Bunting, also raised concerns about Wehby’s appointment in an interview with The Gleaner at the conference.
According to Bunting Wehby’s appointment “is fraught with potential conflicts of interest”. He indicated that the Jamaica Bankers’ Association, at its next meeting, might be taking a careful look at this development.
“I anticipate that the Jamaica Bankers’ Association is going to be very unhappy with a situation where one of their competitors, whose substantive job is still with the company, being in a position of regulator and overseeing the industry … I think it puts the other players in the industry in an unfair position,” Bunting argued.
The Central Manchester MP-elect said that to take up a job in the public service and still having a private-sector attachment waslike “having your cake and eating it”.
In this regard, Bunting suggested that Wehby should step down from his private-sector job.
He said precedent had been set when Danny Williams resigned from Life of Jamaica in the 1970s to serve in government.
However, chairman and chief executive officer of GraceKennedy, Douglas Orane, told The Gleaner in a recent interview that Wehby resigned last Thursday from the boards of the parent company and its subsidiaries.
This was in keeping with the provisions of Ministry Paper No.19/2002, which sets out the conduct of ministers.
Meanwhile, Simpson Miller sent a strong signal to the current administration, saying that her party’s constitutional challenges in the court could have significant bearing on the results of the September 3 general election.
Declaring that “it’s not over until it’s over”, the PNP leader contended that the constitutional motions filed against at least two JLP Members of Parliament-elect who had allegedly sworn allegiance to a foreign power were being vigorously pursued by the party.
She told delegates that the party was receiving advice from a battery of high-profile lawyers, including David Coore, K.D. Knight, John Junor and A.J. Nicholson.
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