Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer

FORMER JUNIOR minister, Delano Franklyn, says the People's National Party's (PNP) failure to implement the recommendations of the Meeks Report it commissioned two years ago has contributed to the party's stagnation.

Franklyn, who contested and lost the Western St Mary seat to Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) Robert Montague in the September 2007 general election, said after initial excitement, not much has been heard of the report.

"I just don't think we have given that report the rigorous attention it deserves. If we did, the party, I think, would be in a better position today," Franklyn tells The Sunday Gleaner. He says the PNP urgently needs renewal, which is largely what the Meeks Report recommends. Last Monday's embarrassing loss to the JLP in the West Portland by-election, he says, is evidence the PNP needs to change its tune.

Credible policies

"With the financial situation in the world, it's a tough time to run any country. We can't be coming with the old, tired thing of times hard and poor people suffering," the former junior foreign affairs minister argues. "We have to present credible policies and direction."

Professor Brian Meeks, a lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies' Mona campus, led the team that produced the report on the PNP's performance in the September 2007 election.

The 40-page document was handed to the PNP executive in January last year, four months after the PNP's loss to the JLP in the general election.

High marks

Disbanding the PNP Youth Organisation (PNPYO) and establishing a recruitment and succession programme were two of the report's main recommendations. It earned high marks from senior PNP executives, including chairman Robert Pickersgill, but was roundly criticised by the PNPYO.

On Friday, PNP Deputy General Secretary Julian Robinson said some of the issues raised in the Meeks Report had been implemented, but did not say which.

Robinson told The Sunday Gleaner that some of the party's senior officers were scheduled to discuss the report in a meeting on the weekend where an assessment of the West Portland by-election would head the agenda.

He said those issues would be reviewed at an executive meeting tomorrow.