Golding confirms PNP members recorded leaked voice notes on NAR sabotage

Opposition leader Mark Golding admitted on Sunday that members of the People’s National Party recorded and circulated the leaked voice notes discussing sabotage of the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority, while insisting the audio does not reflect official PNP policy.

Addressing the party’s National Executive Council at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Golding said a completed internal review found three points: the conversation did not occur in any official party forum; no party officer took part; and the PNP has no official NEC or executive WhatsApp group.

“This was a WhatsApp group formed by individuals within the party and the views expressed were their personal views,” Golding said. “So those recordings do not represent the official position of the PNP or any policy of the PNP.”

He added that the party answers only for positions set by its constitutional bodies, including the NEC and the executive committee, and communicated by authorised representatives. Attempts to reach the members said to be heard on the recordings were unsuccessful.

The governing Jamaica Labour Party has linked the leaks to efforts to stall Hurricane Melissa recovery work under NAR. Senator Abka Fitz-Henley, chairman of the JLP’s communications task force, called Golding’s roughly two-minute remarks shameful and misleading, saying he never strongly condemned an assertion from a PNP executive member that the party would use delay tactics against major NAR projects.

Fitz-Henley said he is advised that Golding cannot deny the group comprises a majority of PNP executive members, including co-opted members, is titled “executive members,” and displays the PNP logo as its profile picture.

JLP Senator Marlon Morgan separately labelled the episode “the mother of all scandals,” calling it a moral failing rather than a financial one. Jamaicans for Justice executive director Mikael Jackson urged that the two people heard on the clips be barred from representational politics and described Golding’s reply as woefully inadequate, while stressing that independent civil society scrutiny of NAR must not be dismissed as partisan.

The controversy also featured at a Jamaica Labour Party Area Council 3 meeting in Manchester, where Water Minister Matthew Samuda, a state minister in the Education Ministry, and Agriculture Minister Floyd Green argued the recordings pointed to obstruction of government projects at the local level.