Montague: 'JLP ready to contest general election'

With favourable poll ratings for the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the latest RJRGleaner Group-Don Anderson Poll, the party says it is ready to contest a general election.

“The party’s quite ready,” JLP chairman Robert Montague confirmed in an interview with The Gleaner.

The next general election is constitutionally due by 2021, however, elections have been consistently called before the end of the five-year period, which administrations are due, and Jamaicans are expecting that elections will be called this year.

However, Montague said the call is up to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, the JLP leader, but the party's machinery is in a state of heightened preparedness.  

“The party is on track because as a political movement our mission is to be ready at a moment’s notice,” Montague said.

“Over the last eight weeks we’ve been re-looking at our organisation, because at this time of the year, in March, is when we do party registration and each constituency is required to bring their organisation up to speed so that by the end of March, all constituencies will be registered, so that you can qualify delegates for conference in November,” Montague said.

He continued: “The machinery normally is heightened [during this] period going into registration, because not only that, we take what you say on paper; we actually have persons from the secretariat going out into the field to test what you have. So the party’s quite ready and later in March the central executive will be signing off on a number of caretakers that we interviewed and passed to be caretakers.”

The signing off of caretakers will mean that the JLP, which currently has a five-seat majority in Parliament, would then have its full slate of 63 candidates for the election.

Among the new caretaker candidates on the JLP's slate for the next general election is Krystal Lee, who will contest the North West St Ann seat against incumbent, Dr Dayton Campbell.

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