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The Secretariat of the People's National Party (PNP) has engaged in feverish consultations in the touchy East Rural St Andrew constituency after Leacroft Forden, a banker by profession, submitted an application to run on its ticket.
Former president of the PNP Youth Organisation, Damian Crawford, had been slated to contest the seat for the party after being hastily pulled out of West Central St Andrew, which the PNP has lost for the past three general elections.
Forden told The Sunday Gleaner that he is banking on his wealth of knowledge of the constituency. "My longstanding commitment and dedication and the people of East Rural St Andrew propels me to offer myself to serve as the PNP candidate in the upcoming elections," he stated in a his application to the PNP secretariat.
He is also relying on his close relationship with two former parliamentarians who represented the constituency in the past - Ginnard Barrett and Oliver Clue - as well as the slate of current councillors/caretakers in the five divisions of the mountainous constituency.
The PNP has been in search of new candidates for both East Rural and West Central St Andrew after it decided to overlook perennial contender Patrick Roberts in West Central St Andrew and Peter Blake in East Rural St Andrew.
With Forden now officially in the husting, the secretariat met with the two contenders to stave off any potential conflicts last week.
General secretary of the PNP, Peter Bunting, has confirmed that he has received an application from Forden to run in the seat that has become a tricky one for both the PNP and the Jamaica labour Party (JLP).
Mum on chances of the aspirants
However, Bunting declined to elaborate on the chances of the aspirants, saying the matter is at a very delicate stage. "We will, in very short order, be installing a candidate in East Rural St Andrew. It is one of a few that we are currently looking on," he told The Sunday Gleaner.
While Crawford enjoys a comparatively strong national profile, Forden is well known in the constituency. He told The Sunday Gleaner that his entire life, to this point, has been one of service at the community level. "I believe that I bring value and integrity and honesty to the political process," he asserted.
There are indications that the marginal seat is emerging as one of two troubling constituencies for the PNP as the secretariat hastens to complete its selection of candidates for a general election that is expected sooner than later.
Blake, the man who was initially expected to be the PNP's candidate in the upcoming general election, lost his bid to contest the election on the PNP ticket after the party's Integrity Commission turned him down.
Party insiders say Blake has appealed the decision, but it is unlikely that the party hierarchy will change its mind.
It was this development that had opened the door for Crawford, who had been groomed for another worrying constituency - that of West Central St Andrew - to change course and turn his attention to East Rural St Andrew
However, Forden told The Sunday Gleaner that his political work over many years in East Rural St Andrew has placed him in good stead to wrest the seat from the JLP.
If Forden, the current campaign manager for Pat Morgan in the Bull Bay division of the constituency for the upcoming Local Government Election prevails, he is likely to challenge a new candidate in the JLP.
The governing party is faring no better than the PNP as the incumbent Member of Parliament Joseph Hibbert, who won the seat for the JLP twice by very slim margins in 2002 and 2007 over the PNP's Oliver Clue and Michael Phillips, is not likely to contest the election a third time around.
gary.spaulding@gleanerjm.com
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