Opposition MP Jamahl Simmons? decision not to run in the next general election and the messy fight in Pembroke West that preceded is exactly what Opposition Leader Wayne Furbert does not need right now.

With an election widely expected sometime this year, Mr. Furbert and the UBP should be putting the finishing touches on their likely line-up of candidates, not dealing with the loss of one of their better young MPs in the kind of internal row that will have brought back memories of the 1990s when the then-Government seemed to be more consumed with internal wrangling than with governance.

That?s not to say that Erwin Adderley is a poor candidate or that the UBP could not use him in the House of Assembly either after the election or even now. Indeed, he was tenacious on planning and the environment, and very effective on issues like the Berkeley scandal and the Housing Corporation in the last Parliament. He may also have drawn the shortest straw in the UBP when constituencies were redrawn in 2003, although fellow MPs Allan Marshall and Tim Smith could lay claim to it too.

The UBP?s problem is it does not have safe seats to hand out to all good candidates, and if it wants to win a General Election, it has to run strong candidates in marginal constituencies.

Indeed, some of the reports of why members of the Pembroke West branch of the UBP were unhappy with him are hard to fathom, not least that some of those who campaigned for him were or are Progressive Labour Party members. One would have thought that an Opposition party would welcome anyone they could attract from the Government, not oppose him.

The branch was also unhappy that Mr. Simmons allegedly did not spend enough time on constituency matters and this may be a more legitimate point, although it is also an age-old lament, especially for Cabinet Ministers and leading shadow Ministers.

Mr. Simmons was vitally important for the UBP in putting flesh on the bones of its empowerment programmes, and was likely to attract swing voters from the PLP on the issue of how to narrow the wealth gap between blacks and whites. That may be the greatest loss to the UBP, and it is a shame that parochial concerns seem to have overtaken the party.

Of course, Mr. Simmons? decision to withdraw entirely from active politics means he can take some of the blame for this as well. It is not entirely clear if he would have remained in politics if the move to oust him had not taken place, but his choice to leave politics prevents the UBP from running him elsewhere.

Opposition Leader Wayne Furbert must also take some blame for not being able to find a solution to the problem. To be sure, party leaders must take some care not to dictate candidates to active branches, but that is where leadership is tested.

All of this is good news for the Progressive Labour Party, which gets some distraction from its own glaring leadership divisions. The UBP clearly has more work to do.