Ready to go! – At least 150 candidates to be nominated today
Nomination Day can be fun-filled
Over I50 aspirants are expected to be nominated today in search of one of the 63 seats in the Jamaican parliament to be contested in the December 29, 20II general elections, the 16th since Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944.
The ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the main Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) will nominate maximum fields of 63 candidates each in the expanded House of Representatives – up from the accustomed 60 following an expansion of the number of constituencies.
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A sprinkling of minor parties and Independent candidates, including the consistent campaigner, Ras Astor Black, are also slated to face returning officers, equipped with their $3,000 fee and 10 electors qualified to secure their legal nomination. All nomination centres open at I0:00am and close at 2:00 pm.
“We are 100 per cent ready and everything is in place,” the JLP’s general secretary Aundre Franklin told the Observer yesterday.
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“Our flyers are up, all systems are up and we are ready to go,” Franklin said.
His uncle and PNP election campaign spokesman Delano Franklyn sounded a similar note of confidence when the Observer contacted him:
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“The party machinery is fully operational for nomination of all its candidates in all 63 seats,” Delano Franklyn, the PNP’s campaign spokesman said. “Our supporters have been sensitised to the time and place where candidates will be duly nominated,” he added.
The National Democratic Movement (NDM) and the Marcus Garvey People’s Political Party (MGPPP) are among those slated to nominate candidates. The two have joined forces to, according to NDM chairman Peter Townsend, “win one or two seats”.
The NDM-Garvey alliance will put forward 17 candidates, Townsend said, with six coming directly from the NDM and 11 from the MGPPP.
With most if not all the representatives of minor parties and independents expected to lose their deposits after election day, the race will come down to a straight toss-up between the JLP and PNP in what pollsters are predicting will be a close contest.
Heading those handing in nomination papers today will be Prime Minister Andrew Holness who will do so at the Waltham Educational Centre, located in the heart of his West Central St Andrew constituency. Holness is slated to be nominated at 1 o’clock.
Holness’s main challenger, the PNP’s Patrick Roberts whom he has defeated in the previous two general elections, will be nominated a full hour before in order to avoid any possibility of JLP and PNP supporters clashing.
West Central St Andrew is considered by law enforcers to be the most volatile seat in the Corporate Area. In the 1980 general election alone, of the 844 deaths recorded by police to be associated with election violence, close to half the number killed either lived or had roots in that constituency, police said. The JLP’s Ferdie Yap defeated the PNP’s Carl “Russian” Thompson in a bloody and bruising encounter.
Opposition leader Portia Simpson Miller is due to hand in her documents at the Greenwich All Age School in the South West St Andrew constituency that she has won every time since 1976, except for the PNP-boycotted election of 1983. She, like Holness, is due to be nominated at 1 pm.
Simpson Miller’s JLP opponent Victor Hyde, will hand in his papers at noon. Based upon voting patterns in South West St Andrew, Hyde’s best chance of electoral success is getting back his deposit, which will occur if he secures a minimum one-eighth of the votes on election day.
A similar deposit-back dilemma hit could the PNP’s Earl Dawkins, who challenges Kingston Mayor Desmond McKenzie in the JLP stronghold of West Kingston, and the JLP’s Messias and Peter Sangster, who face off with the PNP’s Dr Omar Davies and Phillip Paulwell in South St Andrew and East Kingston and Port Royal respectively.
Nomination Day activities have been fun-filled in the West Kingston constituency in recent elections, with the JLP’s Edward Seaga, who held the seat unbroken from 1962 to 2006, often displaying cordial exchanges with his then challenger, Joseph “Bunny” Witter of the PNP.
Witter was also escorted on a motorbike ridden by a Tivoli Gardens-based JLP supporter, from Witter’s Matthews Lane stronghold to be nominated at the Denham Town Primary School when he went up against Bruce Golding in 2007.
While police believe that the day’s exercise will be violence-free, the constituency of West St Thomas will be of particular interest to them, where the JLP’s incumbent James Robertson will confront the PNP’s Leonard Green.
They will be nominated at the Yallahs Primary School.
There have been several killings in the constituency in recent weeks, although police have confirmed only some of those as politically related.
Of particular interest too will be the Nomination Day exercise in Central Manchester, where the incumbent PNP Member of Parliament and general secretary, Peter Bunting, and his challenger, former director of elections and former commissioner of customs, Danville Walker will turn in their papers at 3a Mandeville Plaza.
Recent opinion polls show both candidates in a neck and neck tussle to claim the seat, which before was considered a safe PNP domain.
A total of 1,648,036 Jamaicans will vote on Thursday, December 29. The Electoral Commission of Jamaica said that the list includes 41,607 new electors.
