Jamaican member of parliament (MP) for southeast St. Ann Lisa Hanna says she has now been compelled to publicly resist long-standing efforts by members of her own party, the People’s National Party (PNP) to bully her and use her name to create mischief.
In a lengthy social media post made on May 29, Hanna said her experiences have taught her that politics is not made for the weak the faint heart.
Hanna says over the years the bullying and daily bombardment of salacious accusations being hurled at her by some members of the PNP, have become common placed. She also alleged that her name has been used to create public mischief.
The four-term MP and former treasurer of the party says she has ignored what she described as these sorts of propaganda in the past, in an effort to protect the PNP from any public imbroglio which could cause irreparable damage to its history of comrade civility.
But Hanna says she has now come to realize that her public silence over the years has been perceived by some as “consent and acceptance of the labels attached to her work ethic.:
Therefore, Miss Hanna says in protection of her reputation and integrity against those who intend on continuously creating mischief, she is insisting that they desist. She is warning that it will take more than propaganda to frighten her out of her commitment to the PNP and the people of Jamaica.
On November 7, 2020, two months after a brutal loss in the general elections, Mark Golding was elected as the new leader of the party, replacing Dr. Peter Phillips.
Hanna says on that day, she expressed her sincere congratulations and publicly declared her full support to work with President Golding. She said she was grateful to Golding for re-appointing her as Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade.
“Our country demands robust intellectual maturity and brave commitment to move our grassroots to the middle class and the middle class to being internationally wealthy. These efforts have my exclusive political focus,” Hanna pledged.
“We all have a responsibility to future generations to take a stand and act in a manner that is in the long-term best interest of our children, harnessing the pride in our history while instilling within them firm moral convictions and integrity.
If we fail, we will find ourselves walking backwards alone into the future with our eyes closed,” she wrote.
In November last year, Lisa Hanna lost the PNP Presidential election to Mark Golding by approximately 3-hundred votes. In the September 2020 General Election, Hanna was one of the 14 PNP parliamentarians who retained her seat by a slim margin of 31 votes.
