Junior minister for Water and Housing Everald Warmington (back row, right) passes a letter to Government Member of Parliament Andrew Gallimore (second row, right) while Prime Minister Bruce Golding (standing) addresses the House of Representatives on Tuesday. Government MP Ernest Smith (back row, centre) looks on. Also pictured are Government MP St. Aubyn Bartlett (back row, left) and Minister of Education Andrew Holness (partly hidden). - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Junior Minister for Water and Housing, Everard Warmington, is not new to controversy.

Twenty-six years ago, Warmington, then Member of Parliament for South West St. Catherine, wrote a letter to the project manager at the Cotton Polyester site in Old Harbour.

The letter indicated that People's National Party (PNP) supporters would "not be allowed to re-enter the site under any circumstances".

His comments came shortly after the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) landslide win in the 1980 general election.

The contents of Mr. Warmington's letter drew sharp rebuke and chastisement from members of the public, commentators, and then Prime Minister Edward Seaga, who scolded the MP for what he stated in his letter.

Just Tuesday, Mr. Warmington tendered an apology for remarks he made in his constituency days before the local government election on December 5.

No vote, no relief

He told persons at a political rally that if they did not vote for the JLP they would not receive hurricane-relief cheques.

Then Gleaner columnist Wilmot 'Mutty' Perkins, in a column written on Tuesday, November 18, 1980, said it was difficult for him to believe that Mr. Warmington could have been so "gauche and arrogant" as to have written the letter attributed to him and published on the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation and in the Daily News (both now defunct).

"To my amazement, Mr. Warmington tells me that he did," Mr. Perkins said.

In his conversation with the then columnist, now talk show host on Power 106 FM, Mr. Warmington admitted that the pronouncements in his letter to the project manager were inconsistent with the Prime Minister's assurance that no PNP supporter had anything to fear from the victorious JLP Government in the 1980 election.

However, Mr. Warmington was quoted as saying that he has a "mess" down there in the constituency, which had to be cleaned up.

"What he told me on the telephone was that the persons he was determined to exclude from the site were 'terrorists and gunmen' who had been imported into the constituency to make all kinds of trouble in the period leading up to the election," said Mr. Perkins.

But Mr. Warmington said in his letter that "All employees who are regular employees of your company and are from outside my constituency will be allowed to continue on the job."

Raising questions of political victimisation, Mr. Perkins said the country expected better from the Seaga government. "It waits expectantly for Mr. Seaga to put the matter beyond a shadow of a doubt," he added.

The former PM did, as he moved decisively to reprimand Mr. Warmington for his letter.

Describing Mr. Seaga's action, another Gleaner columnist of the 1980s, Jennifer Ffrench, said his "quick rebuke" of Mr. Warmington was commendable and reassuring.

Mr. Warmington, who became an MP at the age of 28, was born in Brown's Hall, St. Catherine, in 1952, and was educated at Brown's Hall All-Age School, St. Andrew Technical High School and the College of Arts, Science and Technology (now UTech).

He was a vice-president of Young Jamaica, the youth arm of the JLP.