March municipal polls

Parties prepare for new battle in local-government election

Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer

The Portia Simpson Miller-led People's National Party (PNP) is looking to go for the double by calling local-government election by the end of March when the legal timeline runs out on the existing legislation to postpone the polls.

The Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has served notice that it is also bracing for a March election and has warned that it will not be overwhelmed by the PNP.

After at least three consecutive postponements of the local-government polls by the former Bruce Golding government, it's all systems go for the buoyed-up PNP forces, following its decisive December 29, 2011 victory.

PNP General Secretary Peter Bunting told The Sunday Gleaner that his party was finalising a well-advanced candidates' selection.

A high-level source in the PNP told The Sunday Gleaner that there will be no more deferment of the election.

Bunting reacted coyly when the question was put to him. "That is not my responsibility (to state when an election will be called). That is the prerogative of the prime minister. My job is to ensure that the party successfully contests an election when it is called," he responded.

He said more than 90 per cent of the candidates for the PNP slate were in place.

He said as a part of the PNP organisational strategy, the selection exercise was carried out by regional organisations of the party, unlike the selection of candidates for the general election which was done on a national level.

"In this regard, the secretariat is assisted by the regional organisations which were delegated the responsibility of candidate selection for the local-government election," Bunting told The Sunday Gleaner.

Karl Samuda, the JLP's campaign director, seems to have shrugged off some of the disappointments of the December 29, 2011 defeat, when he was asked about his party's state of readiness.

He said the JLP had anticipated that the polls would be held by the end of March. "It doesn't take rocket science to see that, but make no mistake about that, the JLP will be ready for them and we will have an electoral machinery based on introspection and appropriate strategy to deal with these elections.

"We have absolutely no problems in getting our slate of candidates to face elections," he asserted when asked about the state of preparedness of the JLP's selection process.

Both the JLP and the PNP, over the years, have brought bills to Parliament postponing local-government elections, which are due every three years.

Although three constituencies have been added to the original 60, only one division has been added, bringing the total number of divisions being contested this time around to 228, up from 227 in 2007.

postponed three times

At the start of the millennium, the P.J. Patterson administration postponed the election three times after it became due in 2001.

Patterson signalled to the House of Representatives then that legislation would put off the election to a date not later than June 30, 2003.

He argued that the polls had to be delayed for a number of reasons, including the referral of the Municipalities Act which was crucial to the establishment of the Portmore municipality to a joint select committee of Parliament.

The opposition JLP resisted the move and called on the Government to honour the word given by the then prime minister to hold the election by March 31.

When the local government election was called in the aftermath of the PNP's 2002 general election victory, the JLP swept the polls in June 2003.

It was the second time in the country's post-independence history that a governing party was losing a local-government election. The first was in 1986 when the Edward Seaga-led JLP administration lost the local-government election.

The tables turned four years ago, when the JLP won the 2007 general election and swept local government that same year.

The Golding administration that took office in September 2007 did as Patterson had done before him.

Golding swept the local-government election of December 2007 but later brought bills to Parliament to postpone the next due one to a date not later than March 30, 2012.

gary.spaulding@gleanerjm.com