Country to face ‘constitutional crisis’ if Portmore included as parish in next general election, says former ECJ chair

Professor Errol Miler, the former chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), is warning that there will be dire consequences for the electoral system in Jamaica if general elections due later this year are held with Portmore included as a parish despite constituency boundary breaches now in place.

Miller, weighing in on the controversy surrounding the decision by the Government to increase the number of parishes in Jamaica from 14 to 15, said the decision was sound and reasonable. The former ECJ boss argued. however, that despite the passing of legislation in Parliament, the earliest Portmore could become a parish is 2026.

In an opinion piece on his website, errolmiller . com, he said having read carefully the Act to Amend the Counties and Parishes Act, which was used to declare the City Municipality of Portmore the 15th parish of Jamaica and connected matters, he was offering the following unsolicited position.

“There is sound and reasonable justification for increasing the number of administrative units into which Jamaica is divided from 14 to 15. Portmore, capital Portmore, best qualifies to become the 15 parish,” he stated in a blog post on the site.

According to Miller, “The Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) has done its duty, as set out in The Electoral Commission Interim Act 2006, by advising the Ministry of Local Government, and the Parliament, concerning boundary violations that will occur if the existing constituency, electoral division, and polling division boundaries that now define the Municipality of Portmore are unchanged in establishing the Parish of Portmore.”

The Parliament, in February, voted by majority for the municipality to become a parish. However, it remains unclear if despite the amendment of the act and vote and passage into law by both Houses of Parliament whether the country legally has 15 parishes.

The parliamentary opposition has accused the Government of gerrymandering, which means the manipulation of the boundaries of an electoral constituency to favour one class or political party, while other interest groups have complained about not only the process, but what they consider the lack of proper consultation.

But in his blog post, Miller said: “If there is compliance with the Constitution of Jamaica, then the earliest time that Portmore can become a parish is February 2026. This is because the Constitution of Jamaica is pellucidly specific as to when electoral boundaries must be changed, which is during a two- to four-year period of general review, (which is) four years after the last period of general review. The last general review ended in February 2022.”

He issued a caution, noting that Jamaica would be pushed into a constitutional crisis if the Government ignored the advice of the ECJ.

“Should the Government decide to use its majority on the Standing Committee of Boundaries of Parliament and its majority in Parliament to ignore the advice of the Electoral Commission to violate the Constitution with respect to breaches of constituency boundaries and to hold a general election which includes the parish of Portmore, then the following will happen,” he wrote.

“The country will immediately be pushed into a major constitutional crisis. What would not be in question would be that a general election would have been held with identified violations of constituency boundaries by the competent authority with no compelling urgency for so doing. The time for the court to rule on the matter and the remedy if the court rules such action unconstitutional is moot,” he declared.

Should an election be conducted with the issues at stake, he said, the ECJ “will certainly become a façade when another breach of the convention is added to the fiasco of making the Electoral Commission the political ombudsman”.

Should that be allowed, he said, the ECJ “may as well be downgraded from being a commission of the Parliament to a department of government”.

Miller said he believed “widely recognised gains made since 1979 by Jamaica as an authentic and stable democracy will be put at grave risk” and that “this is likely to have long-term negative and even dire consequences for Jamaica and Jamaicans at home and abroad”.

Miller’s views, on the availability of time to include Portmore as a parish in the next general election, mirror those of former Director of Elections Orette Fisher.

In a recent interview with The Gleaner, Fisher said that given constitutional requirements, there was not enough time to amend legislation for Portmore as a parish to be a factor in the upcoming general election.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com