THOUSANDS of electors will not be allowed to vote for mayor in the Portmore Municipal Council, next Monday, based on this week’s Supreme Court ruling that elections be held using the 2003 boundaries.

The Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ), which took two days before saying how the court ruling would affect voting in Monday’s local government election in the municipality, said yesterday that 4,837 electors who now fall outside the boundaries will no longer be able to vote for mayor.

The EOJ’s explanation came just hours ahead of the opening of the polls for the security forces and election day workers, who are voting three days ahead of the general electorate, as is customary.

Since the judgement was handed down, the EOJ has been scrambling to decide on the way forward, and subsequently relied on the Attorney General’s Chambers for advice.

“As a result of the recent Supreme Court ruling, the mayoral election for the Municipality of Portmore will not be held on the gazetted boundaries of 2015, but will instead be held on the 2003 boundaries. The electoral divisions affected are Greater Portmore North in St Catherine Southern and the Portmore Pines Division in St Catherine East Central,” the EOJ said in a release yesterday.

The Supreme Court ruling has turned back an order made by former Local Government Minister Noel Arscott in 2015 under the People’s National Party (PNP) Administration to realign the municipal boundaries for Portmore that take in areas in Spanish Town.

PNP Member of Parliament for St Catherine South Fitz Jackson, whose constituency is one of those affected, stressed in a previous

Jamaica Observer interview that the mayoral vote was not the substantial issue. He argued that when Parliament had the boundaries redrawn in 2010 to accommodate a new constituency, legislators knew that there would be a resultant misalignment and that this would have to be fixed.

The then Government had issued instructions to the EOJ to do so, but after a drawn-out fuss over the issue, Jamaica Labour Party councillor/candidate for the Southborough Division, Lennox Hines, took the matter to court.

Yesterday, Jackson told the Observer that he was surprised by the instructions given by the EOJ because, as far as he knew, Solicitor General Nicole Foster-Pusey had up to yesterday issued advice which was to the contrary.

“My understanding is that the solicitor general indicated that, by legislation of February 2016, the new boundary would prevail. The judge’s ruling that came out on Tuesday was in respect to how it was done in 2015. Subsequent to that action by the minister in 2015, by legislation promulgated in February (this year), the minister’s authority was in order. That was what the solicitor general advised yesterday and was to have provided in writing,” Jackson claimed.

That reference to the solicitor general was, however, not made public.

“The advice that the EOJ got at its meeting where the political parties were in attendance would be contrary to that. The solicitor general herself, is the one who provided the legal advice as to whether or not the court ruling would prevail over the boundary that was set in February this year,” Jackson insisted.

Numerous attempts to have Director of Elections Orrette Fisher confirm or clarify whether the EOJ was acting on advice from the Attorney General’s Chambers were unsuccessful.

Sixteen polling divisions will be affected and electors will only be issued a single ballot to vote for councillor. “The remaining 93,054 electors will be given two ballots to facilitate voting for a councillor and the mayor of Portmore,” the EOJ said.

The affected electors last had the opportunity to vote for both councillors and mayors in the 2007 local elections, before the boundary changes were made in 2010.

It is costing the Government $44,000 to print ballots for the electors no longer able to vote for a mayoral candidate, while the EOJ noted that the election day workers who would have served as poll clerks for the municipal election will no longer be required to work.