Paul Burke’s Assessment Exactly What PNP Needs But Cult-character Won’t Allow It..

Asked about the PNP’s back­lash against him for speak­ing out about his par­ty’s recent loss, for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the People’s National Party (PNP) Paul Burke said: 

“I don’t know what back­lash is. You mean the paid social media mer­ce­nar­ies? [They] have very lit­tle impact on the ground. It’s going to get worse, not bet­ter. I’m going to become Mr Unpopular. It’s water off the duck­’s back, trust me.” 
“They can’t do any­thing to me. I’m not wor­ried about them. I don’t need them; they don’t need me. The only thing I have is the truth, which I can back up. I don’t know what direc­tion the par­ty will go in, but I real­ly believe that the par­ty has to get its mes­sage clear. It has to be clear. It has to be con­sis­tent. It has to be cred­i­ble and you must find mes­sen­gers, what­ev­er that mes­sage ends up being, who can car­ry that mes­sage. In oth­er words, I can’t car­ry a mes­sage to tell peo­ple go to church because I don’t go to church,” 

Say what you want about Paul Burke’ s brash brava­do, and seem­ing lack of humil­i­ty, but Burke knows what he is talk­ing about. Paul Burke has been in the trench­es and has been instru­men­tal in the PNP’s polit­i­cal suc­cess­es for decades.
Burke under­stands what it takes to win elec­tions, even though his par­ty lacks the basic fun­da­men­tals of gov­er­nance.
It appears that it is to this very issue that Paul Burke is relat­ing.
Burke’s unper­turbed non­cha­lance may be a by-prod­uct of his knowl­edge that many who are now con­demn­ing him for speak­ing out and wants him oust­ed from the par­ty, also want­ed Peter Phillips out of the par­ty as well.
Many of those same peo­ple also at one time labeled Peter Phillips a trai­tor as well.
Phillips was almost [per­sona non gra­ta ]for sign­ing a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States with­out the knowl­edge or con­sent of the Party boss Portia Simpson Miller.
It is that cultish unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic men­tal­i­ty which has defined the PNP through­out its exis­tence.
A men­tal­i­ty which has kept the par­ty stuck sub­scrib­ing to a failed and dis­card­ed [form of Socialism] which has hurt our coun­try expo­nen­tial­ly before, and from which Jamaica has yet to recover. 

The great exis­ten­tial threat to the PNP is the PNP’s refusal to adapt and change. The JLP made the same mis­take after its loss in 88. As a con­se­quence, they were locked out of the process for over two decades. The brain-dead deci­sion to con­tin­ue on as a cult, instead of a 21^st-cen­tu­ry polit­i­cal par­ty is demon­strat­ed by the com­ments against Paul Burke who has been instru­men­tal in the PNP’s suc­cess­es long before many of his crit­ics were born.
Burke a smart polit­i­cal oper­a­tive is cog­nizant that the par­ty needs to change and sep­a­rate itself from the old failed social­ist poli­cies and affil­i­a­tions which ruined the coun­try in the 1970’s.
The Party’s string of loss­es will con­tin­ue as long as the JLP con­tin­ues to build out the nations infra­struc­ture and peo­ple sees pos­i­tive changes hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and in their own lives.
As long as the admin­is­tra­tion can eschew cor­rup­tion, the PNP will have a long time on the out­side look­ing in with clenched fists and beret’s, relics of a dis­tant past no one wants to revisit.