OCHO RIOS, St. Ann:
PEOPLE'S NATIONAL Party (PNP) President and Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said the decision of the Jamaican electorate to re-elect the PNP to office was a rejection of arrogance in the leadership of the country.
He said this was one of two messages from the recent election which political leaders need to take note of.
"The people are saying that they want no leaders, or element of leadership that is arrogant," Patterson told delegates attending the National Executive Council (NEC) of the PNP on Sunday at the Renaissance Jamaica Grande Resort.
In a revision of the PNP's performance in the October 16 General Elections, he said that a greater sense of unity and respect for each other is what the people were demanding at this time.
He added, "whether you be a university graduate or an illiterate, whether you be rich or whether you be poor, whether you are old or whether you are young, everybody like respect and recognition."
Patterson said, when one has respect for people, that person or party will be able to survive even when the going gets tough.
Noting that the PNP is the only political party that had survive a gas riot, he said that instead of being arrogant in response to that situation the party, in its wisdom, made some compromises and that worked.
The Prime Minister said the other message the electorate sent was that doing things without communicating with the people would not work. He single out West Central St. James, where the PNP lost, as one clear example.
"You can't run this country simply by staying in your office or going on the television. You have to go out there amongst the people," he advised.
On the outcome of the election, Patterson said he was hoping for a wider margin to give him a little more elbow room, but added that the electorate might be saying that the country needed more unity and a more balanced Parliament to create the foundation on which unity will exist.
"Believe me, clearly we need unity", he stressed.
The Prime Minister explained that unity did not mean that the political parties see eye to eye on every matter, or that the excitement in the political contest must disappear, but there were somethings which required the will of everyone such as the fight against crime and violence.
Referring to the recent state of killing in the Corporate Area, Patterson repeated his call for unity saying that people cannot live in a country where they are butchering each other.
He argued that while most people in the country were depending on the security forces to bring about peace and unity, the security forces alone could not do it and emphasised that the spirit of unity must begin with the people themselves and that in the PNP, it should begin first within the NEC.
