$1.7b budget for election

THE ELECTORAL Office of Jamaica (EOJ) has confirmed that it has submitted a $1.7-billion budget to the Ministry of Finance for approval ahead of the local government election constitutionally due five months from now.

The figure represents a 70 per cent increase in the budget submitted for approval in December 2021 when it was expected that the well-overdue polls would have been held in February 2022.

In December last year, Director of Elections Glasspole Brown told The Gleaner that the EOJ had begun the process of identifying election-day workers and personnel who would train them. However, he said the training would not commence until the budget was approved.

Since that time, the agency has ramped up its advertisement for workers.

But, yesterday, Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie would not be drawn into commenting on any development related to the cost, insisting that it is still early days.

“The matter has not yet reached that stage. The elections are due February and there is still time for that to be done,” McKenzie said, without confirming if a budget was submitted or approved.

On Sunday, Area Council Two for the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) launched its election campaign machinery for the municipal council polls.

Deputy leader of the JLP James Robertson, in a Gleaner interview yesterday, said that the party has in place a strong cadre of candidates.

“We are more than ready,” Robertson, the deputy leader for Area Council Two, asserted.

Area Council Two comprises the parishes of St Catherine, St Mary, Portland, and St Thomas.

“We are proud of the candidates that we have selected and we are proud of the quality of candidates, in terms of experience, the mix of females to males, professionals, including the number of schoolteachers we have, youth. It is incredible. I have never seen this strength before,” he added.

He divulged that more than 90 per cent of candidates have been selected, and indicated that the divisions that remain outstanding are those in which the incumbent or caretaker-candidate has died.

Two have come from divisions in his St Thomas Western constituency in the last year.

Lenworth Rawle, the deputy mayor who represented the Trinityville division at the St Thomas Municipal Corporation, died at hospital in New York City in November last year.

Councillor for the Seaforth division, Joan Spencer, died suddenly in June. Omar Francis, the councillor-caretaker for the Point Hill division in St Catherine West Central, died in a motor vehicle crash in June last year.

The party also lost 52-year-old Owen Palmer, councillor for the Homestead division in St Catherine South Central, to years into his term following a car crash in 2018.

“Some of the candidates we’ve lost, to get people who will serve at the level those people did, is difficult. But, overall, we are very satisfied. A lot of hard work has gone into it. The four deputy general secretaries of the JLP have done some tremendous work along with the four area council chairpersons,” Robertson said.

“I have never been so happy in my life going in,” he added.

People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell told journalists at The Gleaner Editors’ Forum a week ago that the party has in place 213 of the 228 candidates required to contest the election.

He said that the PNP “has been preparing for a while now”.

Campbell said that the outstanding 15 candidates are within the evaluation process and are being interviewed by the party’s regional panel.

“Going into conference, we intend to present all of the candidates for the local government election,” he said.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com