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Lucky Luther - Buchanan wins tiebreaker, but magisterial recount looms

Published:Monday | September 7, 2020 | 12:28 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
Police and soldiers maintain a security presence at Darliston Primary School where ballots were being recounted for the Westmoreland Eastern constituency. Luther Buchanan won by a single vote cast by the returning officer.
Photo by Albert Ferguson
Police and soldiers maintain a security presence at Darliston Primary School where ballots were being recounted for the Westmoreland Eastern constituency. Luther Buchanan won by a single vote cast by the returning officer.

WESTERN BUREAU:

Lawyers representing Daniel Lawrence, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidate in Westmoreland Eastern, have indicated that they will be seeking a magisterial recount of the ballots cast last Thursday to determine the ultimate winner of the seat.

“We are going to file a magisterial recount of the ballots as early as Monday,” O’Neil Brown, the attorney-at-law representing Lawrence, told The Gleaner following Sunday’s historic vote by the returning officer in deciding the election winner.

Guided by Section 45, Subsection 8 of the Representation of the People Act, the returning officer declared incumbent Luther Buchanan of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) the winner of the seat.

Amid searing tensions a day earlier, the returning officer decided to pull a strip with the name of the candidate after two bits of paper were placed there by the candidates’ lawyers outside the presence of the returning officer.

“He was allowed to take out one by placing his hand in the ballot box. By virtue of that method, the first paper that came to his hand was for Luther Buchanan,” Lawrence said.

At the end of the official count, Buchanan polled 4,835 votes to Lawrence’s 4,834 votes.

More than 100 ballots were rejected.

Martyn Thomas, a member of the JLP’s legal team representing Lawrence, said it would be a race to the wire in arriving at the absolute victor. Thomas, who has been involved in two rounds of unsuccessful magisterial recounts in the St James Southern seat, said the team of lawyers would carefully examine the rejected ballots before mounting their defence.

“In this instance, there are over 107 rejected ballots. What our team will do is go to through the data to determine how many rejected ballots were cast in favour of the JLP and how many for the PNP,” he said.

“Until we look at that, we could not say which side the recount will favour.”

At the same time, Maurice McCurdy, legal counsel for Buchanan, said that he stood ready to defend his client if Lawrence sought the intervention of the court.

“If my colleagues go to a magisterial recount, we will be ready,” a confident McCurdy said.

Glasspole Brown, the country’s director of elections, told The Gleaner that Sunday’s tiebreaker might have been the first in parliamentary elections. There is precedent, however, at local government elections.