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Accompong Maroon chief Richard Currie (centre) at the People's National Party (PNP) conference at the National Arena in St Andrew on Sunday. (Photo: Marlon Reid)
The controversial chief of the Accompong Maroons, Richard Currie, has publicly backed People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding and the Opposition party.
Currie was one of the speaker’s on Sunday at the public session of the PNP’s 86th annual conference at the National Arena in St Andrew.
“They will say I am political, but what yuh expect mi fi do?” said Currie at the beginning of his speech.
He told the packed arena that the maroons “will no longer accept violation of our rights and disrespect, and therefore, we’re here today; we journeyed far, and we sojourned to deliver a message.”
Currie and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Administration have not always seen eye-to-eye. The Accompong Maroons, who claim autonomy over the region of the Cockpit Country where they reside, have also been in several standoff situations with the security forces.
Said Currie: “The point is that we have been soliciting a Government for three-and-a-half years and to date they have not responded to us. To date they have not attended one function, and Marky G (PNP President Mark Golding) has (responded) because he has vim, vigour and vitality.
“This man is a true man; this man is as real as it gets,” he added.
According to Currie, “the maroons are here today to deliver a powerful message that for those who think they can undermine the rights of those who were here 287 years before, we have a sad, sad message to deliver in a few months’ time because the people are tired.”
The maroon chief said there are enough issues to unite Jamaicans and maroons, including poverty and crime.
Currie told PNP supporters that he stood before them not as a political representative, but as a proud representative of Jamaica’s first nation.
He said the presence of the maroons was both a statement and a gesture, “as a statement of unity and gesture towards mutual respect and peace with the Accompong Maroons and all maroons island-wide.”
Currie told Golding that when the PNP next forms the Government, “you also have a home in Accompong bredda”.
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