Having lived in the United States, Hayles acquired dual citizenship. He claims that he gave up his U.S. citizenship prior to nomination day, August 7, and is now awaiting ratification.

Hayles comments tha he wants to visit his children and other family members in the U.S., he has to wait, and he hopes that a December visa application is successful. But the father of three children feels that "services and sacrifice is for causes greater than one's personal self."

In the interview with The Sunday Gleaner, Hayles did not mince words as he blasted members of his former party, which he says offered him as much as $40 million to cross the floor and join them.

The former vice-president of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) affiliate, Generation 2000 (G2K), told The Sunday Gleaner that at the time of the fallout with the People's National Party (PNP), he met Dr. David Panton, who had just started the movement.

Good friends

"I met David and we became good friends with Andrew Holness. I went into G2K and helped build the organisation along with David Panton," Hayles says.

"Along the way, Mr. Seaga saw my work, was impressed with my work, and he asked me to come along and be a special adviser to the Leader of the Opposition."

Hayles worked for three years between 2000 and 2003 as special adviser to Seaga, but once Seaga became former JLP leader, Halyes began to consider his future in the party.

"It came to a point in the Labour Party where it was about class, it was about where you came from and it was about an uptown kind of image ... It did not speak to the traditions which were in me. It was about personality and it still is today," Hayles says.

After four years in the JLP, he resigned as a member of the party, left the G2K and also resigned from the most powerful decision-making body of the party - the standing committee.

"I have always known that in spite of the differences I had with my party, the People's National Party, I would have returned to the fold some day," Hayles tells The Sunday Gleaner.

Ambitious

Meanwhile, Holness, a JLP minister and one who worked closely with Hayles while he was special adviser to Seaga, tells The Sunday Gleaner that "Hayles is very ambitious".

"He is one who has taken full advantage of the opportunities presented to him," Holness says.

One opportunity Hayles would feel that he has seized is returning to the PNP he would not say what commitments the PNP did not honour which forced him to join the JLP, he says he now feels right at home.

"My party has made some mistakes, [but] I am committed to them and I will never leave the folds of the People's National Party," he says.

Hayles leaves very little doubt as to how he feels about Mr. Golding and maintains that his failure to shake the hand of Mr. Golding was not deliberate. It is also clear that Hayles, one of Seaga's protégés, looks up to the former Prime Minister more than the current one.

"In the time that I have known Edward Seaga, he has been someone that I respect, someone that I admire for his service to country and he has always been someone that, as a young person trying to serve the country, I could call upon."

"I can't say that for some people in the Labour Party. Seaga is loyal and he is committed. You could always take Seaga's word to the bank," says Hayles, who gets his inspiration from activists Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey.