Peter May Be Overplaying His Hand As He Edges For Another Leadership Challenge.….

It’s lit­er­al­ly com­e­dy hour at the Apollo lis­ten­ing to the com­ments of Dr Peter Phillips the for­mer finance Minister of the People’s National Party Administration recent­ly defeat­ed at the polls.
Dr Phillips has been tout­ed as the heir-appar­ent of the PNP ‚des­tined to suc­ceed par­ty leader and for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.
To date despite those rum­blings the for­mer Prime Minister has not indi­cat­ed whether she is quite ready to exit the polit­i­cal stage and the par­ty leadership.

Phillips who pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged Miller for lead­er­ship of the par­ty and lost seem to have gone rogue even before the nation­al elec­tions of February 25^th 2016. In what many char­ac­ter­ized as a kamikaze type fix­a­tion on the leader of the oppo­si­tion’s house , Phillips con­tin­ued his attacks which some say may have cost his par­ty the elections.
Despite vot­ers con­cern with cor­rup­tion in Government and the pub­lic sec­tor, many peo­ple argue that Holness’ man­sion could not have come from siphon­ing off pub­lic funds because Andrew Holness had no access to pub­lic funds.

Voters who opined on social media, pri­vate blogs and the Jamaican media stat­ed clear­ly they thought Peter Phillips fix­a­tion on the leader of the Opposition’s house amount­ed to plain old Jamaican “bad mind”.
I believe Peter is as sil­ly as a Fox , but I will get back to that.
Despite Holness mak­ing full dis­clo­sure about how he and his wife Juliet,a real estate devel­op­er are able to afford their home Phillips has moved the goal post as this writer pre­dict­ed he would.
Peter Phillips now insist that Holness now the Prime Minister ‚table his dis­clo­sure in the par­lia­ment despite (1) there being no law which forces him to do so,(2) he has made his dis­clo­sure to three sep­a­rate media houses,(3) nei­ther the leader of the opposition,Peter Phillips him­self , nor any of the oppo­si­tion mem­bers have done so except Julian Robinson.

In what appears to be a seem­ing­ly irra­tional and dis­joint­ed set of state­ments made by Phillips , many are argu­ing that the for­mer finance min­is­ter may be los­ing it, but is he?
Speaking to Party loy­al­ists in Saint James Phillips jok­ing­ly said “Many of us are upset, because it’s three months gone and we are not back in office yet,” .
Okay so this is not the worst thing he could have said to a room­ful of par­ty hacks but his com­ment was part of a larg­er address which was pure­ly delusional .

“The fact of the mat­ter, as men­tioned ear­li­er, is that we are see­ing an Administration in office now that is demon­strat­ing day after day, to put it in reg­u­lar lan­guage, demon­strat­ing say them nuh ready,” “We have the slimmest mar­gin in the Parliament; that has ever exist­ed, and the truth is that the [thing] we must [do] now is to ensure that the People’s National Party pre­pares itself to resume the task of lead­ing Jamaica for­ward,”

No sign of that PhD in this statement.
Slimmest mar­gin in Parliament yes, but no men­tion that in the 63 seat leg­is­la­ture and about 21 gar­ri­son seats nev­er in con­tention 15 – 6 in favor of his par­ty , the PNP lost 11 of the 42 seats which were in play. Of the so-called mar­gin­al seats (seats not char­ac­ter­ized as gar­risons) 42 , the JLP gained 11 with­out los­ing a sin­gle seat.
In a leg­is­la­ture of that size that is a mas­sive repu­di­a­tion of PNP policies .
That is what I find per­son­al­ly curi­ous about Phillips con­tin­ued fix­a­tion on the fan­ta­sy cam­paign against Holness and what he per­ceived to be only a mar­gin­al loss for his party.
Which leads me to believe Peter Phillips is not doing so out of conviction.

It was not so long ago that Peter Phillips was brand­ed a trai­tor by many in his par­ty, yet Phillips har­bor real aspi­ra­tions of becom­ing Prime Minister.
It was at the Manatt Commission of Enquiry in 2004 that it came to light that Phillips then the min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty signed two top secret mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing relat­ing to inves­ti­ga­tion of drug traf­fick­ing and organ­ised crime, with­out inform­ing the then prime min­is­ter and Cabinet. The MOUs were between Jamaica, the United States and the United Kingdom.
At the time Phillips told the com­mis­sion that Cabinet was not an appro­pri­ate body with which the infor­ma­tion should be shared.
I can agree that not every per­son in a gov­ern­ment must know every­thing .Many Governments oper­ate that way but it can­not escape com­mon sense that before Peter Phillips signed those Memorandums he did not dis­cuss them or the impli­ca­tions with his boss and Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller .
Neither did he reveal his actions to her after he did.

The Prime Minister is Minister of defense . If Phillips thought that the then prime min­is­ter could not be trust­ed with nation­al secu­ri­ty secrets whats does it say about the then Prime Minister?
Phillips was vil­i­fied by many in the PNP and there were rum­blings that his safe­ty may have been in ques­tion. Phillips weath­ered that storm and lat­er chal­lenged the ever pop­u­lar Simpson Miller for lead­er­ship of the par­ty after her loss to Bruce Golding but Miller prevailed.
Many con­tend that del­e­gates had not for­got­ten what Phillips had done.

Which brings me to my ear­li­er com­ment that Peter Phillips may be as sil­ly as a fox . Is Peter Phillips just yap­ping , hop­ing to keep his name in the media glare before anoth­er lead­er­ship chal­lenge ? Surely Phillips knows that Simpson Miller has made some dubi­ous his­to­ry of her own despite her incred­i­ble rise with­ing the PNP.
Despite her per­son­al suc­cess­es , she has lost two nation­al elec­tions in less than five years. That is not exact­ly a ring­ing endorse­ment of her skills as a force for good in the coun­try despite her con­tin­ued popularity.

Peter Phillips knows this is his moment if ever he is to become prime min­is­ter. The par­ty leader is silent why should he be? Phillips is bank­ing on keep­ing his name out front as he has been doing . He may have adopt­ed the cal­cu­lus that all pub­lic­i­ty (good or bad) is good pub­lic­i­ty but is he correct?
What he may be miss­ing in his quest for lead­er­ship of the par­ty and his ambi­tion of becom­ing prime min­is­ter is that the issue he has cham­pi­oned as his cause célèbre may have already cost his par­ty one defeat.
Peter Phillips must then decide whether it is worth win­ning a bat­tle while los­ing the war .
Only time will tell.