Poster battle could head to court
PNP threatens MoBay mayor with lawsuit over removal of campaign material
Published:Tuesday | April 15, 2025 | 12:08 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell is threatening legal action against Montego Bay Mayor Richard Vernon and the St James Municipal Corporation if they continue to remove election paraphernalia belonging to PNP candidates from public spaces.
Campbell issued this warning on Sunday night while addressing the PNP’s Friendship Divisional Conference in Westmoreland Western.
“I see the mayor of Montego Bay taking down the billboards of the candidates of the People’s National Party and saying that he is going to continue that operation until the elections are called. But if he continues to do it, we will be heading to court, because his actions are unlawful,” Campbell said.
Last week, the St James Municipal Corporation removed political banners belonging to two prospective PNP candidates in the upcoming general election, Senator Janice Allen and Dr Andre Haughton. This triggered a heated stand-off between members from both sides of the political aisle at last week’s St James Municipal Corporation meeting.
But Campbell argued that the country is now in the officially designated campaign period, which gives his PNP colleagues the right to have their banners properly displayed across the five St James constituencies in which they are seeking to be elected.
‘The law says that the official campaign period starts six months before the fifth anniversary of the last election,” Campbell said.
The last general election was held on September 2, 2020.
“So, six months before that, which brings us to March, that’s when the official campaign period started, and we’re not taking any ‘bad up’ from any little mayor who thinks that they can come and intimidate and victimise members of the People’s National Party,” the PNP general secretary insisted.
However, responding to questions from The Gleaner during a press conference on Monday at the St James Municipal Corporation’s offices, Vernon urged the PNP to proceed to court if they have an issue with his decision to uphold the Town and Country Planning Advertisement Control Regulation of 1978.
“The intent of the law, at the time when it was presented by Phillip Paulwell, was to ensure that there is proper reporting on campaign financing, and if you go to the bill of 2015, it will state that this bill is being presented to improve transparency in campaign financing,” Vernon said.
He cited the 1978 Town and Country Planning Advertisement Control Regulations, which provide for the matter of advertisement and the period covering a wide cross section of groups, including politicians.
“It says that you are to advertise during a particular period, and it says you are to remove the advertisement after two weeks, or when it is no longer useful to the space. Not only does it speak to the political, it speaks to the religious, charitable groups, and other interest groups that want to advertise, and it gives a limit,” Vernon explained.
“We‘ve said that if there is an issue with it, take it up elsewhere because it is debatable, perhaps based on many different interpretations. There are lawyers out there; they know how to manipulate and bring different pieces of legislation to bring about a particular meaning,” Vernon said, referencing the six-month campaign period as stipulated in the Representation of the People Act (ROPA).
“For us, our position and our understanding of it, from a point of advertisement control, you have approximately a month to advertise, to do your thing, and then at the end of that period, you take it down. So two weeks before the election, you put it up when the election is announced; two weeks after the election, you take them down – that’s a month,” Vernon insisted.
“Now, if we are supposed to adopt what the ROPA Act is suggesting as the campaign period to allow advertisement to be done by way of billboards and posters during this period, it would mean that we are allowing advertisement to be up for six months, half of a year,” Vernon argued.
“Just imagine St James Street, Jimmy Cliff Boulevard, and every other street in the city of Montego Bay plastered in green and orange flags and billboards for six months. Does that sound like development control? I don’t think so. Does that sound like advertisement control? I don’t think so – so it must be when it is most useful,” the mayor argued.