PNP USED PEOPLE : ‘PNP used people’ Councillor says party destroyed self-worth, pride of J’cans and used them as pawns in a game

BY TANESHA MUNDLE Observer staff reporter mundlet@jamaicaobserver.com  Tuesday, April 26, 2016 

OUTSPOKEN People’s National Party (PNP) councillor Venesha Phillips has blamed her party for deliberately destroying the self-worth and pride of Jamaicans and using them as pawns in a game.

The Papine councillor made the charge on Sunday during a ‘reasoning session’ at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston where members of the organisation were asked to express their views about the party as the organisation seeks to reposition itself and move on from its recent loss in the February 25 General Election.

Comrades who attended the inaugural forum, dubbed ‘Comrades Grassroot Reasoning’, were asked to answer two questions: ‘The PNP, who are and what are we’? and ‘Have we been true to our cause’?

Phillips, in her answer to the latter question, claimed that the PNP has not been true to its cause. “We have not really been true to the cause because self-worth and pride have been gutted from our people and deliberately so.

“Our people today are not recipients of empowerment but instead they have become pawns used in the games by those who wish to create the PNP that they want to exist in,” she said.

Phillips claimed that the party has used money to control and manipulate the people.

Venesha Phillips

“… So Comrades, we have moved away from when Michael Manley (former party leader and prime minister) gave us that sense of purpose that we are not for sale, and today we are for sale because today every man have them price.”

Phillips charged that money has been used to manipulate the people because they have not been able to afford some basic items.

“… Instead of empowering them… we use money as a weapon and we have brought our people to their knees just so we can establish our own cause,” said Phillips. more