WHAT'S ALL THE
It's just to deal with some resolutions tabled by the previous Executive
Council and select someone to lead the party into the next general election,
four members of the extraordinary conference committee said yesterday.
Chairman Ronald Jones, Philip Greaves, Warwick Franklin, and Stephen Lashley said yesterday at a Press conference at party headquarters George Street, Belleville, St Michael, that it was being done now instead of waiting until the election bell was rung.
Five branches had reported to Jones so far, he said.
He asked why the furore.
Greaves said there was nothing suspicious about the process.
Lashley said there was nothing "special" about the conference as it was just allowing the ordinary men and women in the party to say who would lead them into the election.
And Franklin said every member of the DLP had the opportunity to take part and he did not see how that could be interpreted as someone having "unbridled lust for power".
Reiterating the process was democratic, that the political leader was voted for by members of the parliamentary group, Jones said the branches should be looking for someone to lead the party into elections.
He added: "It is therefore unpalatable, unsavoury, wicked, and malicious for any person to even suggest that only one person, unless they have some foresight into the future to determine what the legitimate constituency branches of the Democratic Labour Party in the first instance and secondly what the wider membership would do."
The Christ Church East Central MP added there were "too many persons who wanted to subvert the process" by speaking "unrealistically and out of turn".
He invited those who had been "speaking from being absent without leave from around the party for several months now" to let their voices be heard.
Greaves, a former deputy prime minister, made it clear that the resolutions tabled would still have gone forward if Freundel Stuart was still party president.
"In some sections of the Press attempts appear to be made as though now we have a new president that these resolutions are intended to support and shore up him [David Thompson] as the real leader of the party. That is not the case.
"A lot of focus has been placed on the position of political leader, [that position] only appears in Rule 50 of the constitution, no other place whatsoever in this party's constitution," Greaves said.
He added that the DLP's constitution was not as "sacred" or irrevocable as was made out to be and in fact had been amended from time to time.
The political leader's function under their constitution, Greaves added, was to chair the meetings of the parliamentary group.
"There is no other function assigned to the political leader. There is nothing here that would give one the impression that this is something new that we are putting forward," he added.
Greaves said if the resolutions were successful the leader's function would remain the same.
"If this resolution is passed this is not intended to replace the present Leader of the Opposition with anybody else," he said.