Social media infighting providing fodder for JLP – councillor

ONE PNP campaigner Councillor Venesha Phillips says that the discourse in the current People’s National Party (PNP) presidential election has reached gutter levels.

“Manure is a good thing because manure can benefit some plants. But what is happening is bordering on gutter. It’s downright vulgar. And it cannot continue like that. As leaders, we have to set the tone,” she told The Gleaner.

Women, she posited, were likely to react in an emotive way, but she did not believe that it was uncontrollable. One PNP, she said, recognised some of the social media players and their connections.

“Social media has to be a contained space, although it is an open space, and that may seem contradictory. Most of the persons who are blogging are friends and associates of persons in party circles, and we know some of them. In the main, we can appeal to our support base to manage their comments in the space,” she argued.

In decrying the derogatory comments, she said it was providing political fodder for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) campaign in the general election.

Rise United campaign manager Dr Dayton Campbell said the two candidates have signed the campaign rules but that monitoring remained difficult, if not elusive.

“We haven’t had another meeting with the election monitoring committee, but when the issue was raised at the first meeting, it was an attempt to control persons and comments in that space,” Campbell told The Gleaner.

“We tried to explain that it was difficult as some of the profiles are fake and many were not even in Jamaica. Generally, it is difficult to monitor social media. We can be held accountable for what is said on the platform, but even that has been a very difficult task,” he said.