WESTMORELAND, Jamaica — General Secretary of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Dr Horace Chang says the party will be requesting a magisterial recount for the Westmoreland Eastern constituency, which was this morning declared in favour of People’s National Party (PNP) incumbent Luther Buchanan.

“We will definitely be seeking a magisterial recount. I understand there are about 123 spoilt or rejected ballots, and we strongly believe that with the keen eyes of a magistrate, some of them will go in our favour, so we will be pursing that aggressively and vigorously,” Dr Chang told OBSERVER ONLINE a short while ago.

“From the reports from our team down there [at the counting centre at the Darliston Primary School], we believe that our candidate Daniel Lawrence has a good chance of getting the seat.”

The seat was declared in favour of the JLP’s Lawrence in the preliminary count of the ballots in last Thursday’s general election, which saw him polling 4,831 to Buchanan’s 4,823.

But in the final counting of the ballots, which ended yesterday, it was revealed that both candidates had each polled 4,834 votes while independent candidate Haile Mika’el got 34.

This morning, Returning Officer Bernard Campbell cast a deciding vote in favour of Buchanan.

Buchannan, a former PNP deputy general secretary has been the elected member of parliament for the constituency since 2006.

He first won the seat in a by-election following the retirement of former Prime Minister PJ Patterson from representational politics.

Mark Cummings