By Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter
Minister Aloun Assamba in a statement yesterday said her comments were 'misinterpreted'. - File
ALOUN ASSAMBA, Member of Parliament for South East St. Ann and Minister of Industry and Tourism have been harshly criticised for stating that a civic committee in her constituency was stacked with People's National Party (PNP) supporters.
Among her critics is Beverley Lopez, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) who described the Minister's comments as 'unfortunate'.
"The voice clip that we heard was unfortunate. It was hard to judge and I am not sure of the context in which it was said," she said.
Continuing she said: "One of the problems in Jamaica is the whole tribalistic nature of our politics and we all recognise that is the nature of politics. We should not be surprised. More importantly is how can we change the nature of the politics as we see it."
FACTUAL
Meanwhile, Edmond Bartlett, Opposition Spokesman on Tourism said that the statement made by Minister Assamba was factual, adding: "It is unfortunate that that they have attempted to corrupt the development process at the community level by literally transferring the party group structure into civil society," he said. Mr. Bartlett also called for an immediate dismantling of all such civic organisations, which are politically tainted.
However, Colin Campbell, deputy general secretary of the PNP has defended Minister Assamba's statement. "Minister Assamba has defined it as a national committee the appointments are entirely up to her. Every politician all 60 of them do it! I really don't know what is the issue we are too hung up," he told The Gleaner in an interview.
Asked if her quote was taken out of context, he replied, " I am not blaming anyone, it (the statement) was not properly understood."
CIVIC COMMITTEE
Minister Assamba who was addressing delegates at a meeting of the PNP's Region Three on the weekend said: "In my constituency before I became the Member of Parliament, I challenged the business community to set up a civic committee, which they have done. And it's called a civic committee but I made sure that it is full of PNP people because we have an agenda. And the agenda that we have is that South East St. Ann will never be represented by anybody other than the People's National Party."
The Minister in a statement yesterday said her comments were "misinterpreted". She explained: "The South East St. Ann Civic Committee is a non-partisan organisation comprising volunteers who contributed their time and resources toward improving the quality of life of all who reside in the constituency."
"As far as I know, some committee members are also members of the PNP , some are JLP members and others belong to neither party... members of the civic committee are not appointed by the Member of Parliament or any other individual. It is therefore wrong to interpret my statement as meaning that somehow, apart from encouragement, I got people to be members of the civic committee," she said.
