Editorial | PNP’s gamble with Dayton Campbell

While Peter Phillips’ intention in recalling Dayton Campbell to his shadow Cabinet is understood, it’s a gamble that might deliver a double-edged sword from which their People’s National Party (PNP), too, may bleed.

Dr Phillips’ primary aim, of course, is to portray unity in the PNP. In that regard, making Dr Campbell a shadow minister, and giving him a high-profile role in the party’s campaign for the next general, is symbolic.

Dr Campbell is a practising physician who used to be the PNP’s spokesman on health. He was held to have done a fair job in his take-no-prisoners style at harassing and harrying the incumbent minister, Christopher Tufton, who has a PhD in marketing, for his supposed failures in the portfolio. Dr Campbell’s knowledge of medicine was an obvious advantage.

When Peter Bunting challenged Dr Phillips for the presidency of the PNP, he made Dr Campbell his campaign manager – a role he assumed with characteristic vitriolic relish. His tone, and words, on the husting, were, more often than not, harsh. He repeatedly suggested that Dr Phillips, 69, was too old for the job, was unelectable and uninspiring, and that he was attempting to hold on to the PNP’s leadership merely for personal ambition. The clear implication was that for Dr Phillips, the assumption of Jamaica’s premiership would be an end in itself.

In last September’s votes, after a bruising campaign, Peter Phillips narrowly retained his job – by 76 votes, or less than three per cent of the delegates. Weeks later, when he named his shadow Cabinet, unsurprisingly to this newspaper, Dr Campbell wasn’t a member.

Our supposition was that while the primary responsibility for political healing rests with the leader, Dr Phillips, in part, was intent on assuaging his personal dignity, while sending a signal that there are consequences to elections, whether those internal to organisations, or between political parties. He needed to have on his team people with whom he could work.

On the other hand, there was the argument, especially on the Bunting wing of the PNP, that Peter Phillips had sidelined a talented and effective campaigner and that by not embracing Dr Campbell, he missed an opportunity not only to show magnanimity, but to accelerate the healing of the party.

NO EASY RIDE

Whatever the merit of either argument, Dr Campbell is again among his party’s shadow ministers, with responsibility for special projects, but whose real job is to be at the forefront of the campaign for the general election that is constitutionally due in early 2021, but which Prime Minister Andrew Holness is expected to call during the first half of this year.

“Dr Campbell’s immediate task is to prepare an implementation programme for priority projects, across all ministries, to be undertaken by the next PNP administration in the first 150 days,” the party’s general secretary, Julian Robinson, said in a statement.

The role has echoes of the ministry of mobilisation, under D.K. Duncan, that Michael Manley established in the 1970s in the effort to fast-track alternative economic projects, in the face of a faltering economic support deal with the International Monetary Fund.

The efficacy of this portfolio will be determined in the future, including by how voters respond to the agenda that Dr Campbell and the PNP place before them. However, Dr Campbell and his party can’t expect an easy ride along the way.

By the time the election campaign heats up, Dr Campbell’s characterisation of Peter Phillips will still be relatively fresh in people’s mind, and the governing Jamaica Labour Party is unlikely to allow them to forget. The video clips will be prominent.

Further, to be effective, Dr Campbell may have to show he has matured more in a matter of months than in the four years between 2015 – when he was complaining about the “Labourisation of the PNP” and suggesting Lisa Hanna’s primary currency as politician was her good looks and status as a former Miss World – and 2019 when he was eviscerating Peter Phillips.