Stagnant NDM in a coma, says chairman
THE NATIONAL Democratic Movement (NDM) is emerging from “a coma” and has scaled down to an advocacy group, Chairman Michael Williams has said.
Williams told The Gleaner that the party simply does not have the funds needed to run a successful campaign.
He cited a failed attempt to solicit support from a businessman as an example of why the NDM was unable to compete with the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP).
“The man said to us … , ‘When I support you, what are you going to do for us?’
“I said you are going to get a country that is governed properly and your purchasing base will be extended by 40 per cent in five years. He closed his chequebook,” recounted Williams as he documented the party’s challenges in getting financial support.
But the lack of funds will not stop the party from advocating for better governance from the two leading parties. He said the president will be doing some video presentations in the coming weeks on good governance, which they plan to circulate to the wider public.
The NDM was founded with much fanfare in 1995 by former
Labourites and other nonaligned members with the aim of unsettling the political status quo. But the country’s most prominent modern third party failed in its bid to wrest a single seat in the 1997 national polls, causing its then leader Bruce Golding to leave the party.
Golding returned to the JLP and led the party to victory in the 2007 general election.
Peter Townsend is the NDM’s current president. The party has never won a parliamentary seat.
Williams predicts that Prime Minister Andrew Holness will calling the general election just ahead of the reopening of schools in September.
“An August election right after Independence, that is how we figure it out,” Williams surmised.
The NDM chairman added: “We don’t have any candidates now, that is the problem with us. As I said, we are coming out of a coma and we are now re-energising our party. We won’t have time, based on the work that we have to do to contest the elections.”
Only four parties are currently registered by the Electoral Commission of Jamaica to contest the next general election, which is constitutional due by early 2021. They are the JLP, PNP, the United Independents’ Congress led by Joseph Patterson, and the recently formed Jamaica Progressive Party, which primarily consists of pastors.