JC Hutchinson predicts JLP clean sweep in Area Council Four

WESTERN BUREAU:

Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Deputy Leader J.C. Hutchinson is predicting that when the next local government elections are called, his party will be taking over the leadership of all five municipal corporations in Area Council Four, which covers the county of Cornwall.

Local government elections are constitutionally due in February 2022, but the Government has not yet indicated when it will be called.

“Put it this way, we are going to control all the municipal corporations in the JLP Area Council Four,” Hutchinson said of the parishes of Hanover, St James, Hanover, Westmoreland and St Elizabeth.

The JLP currently chairs three of the five municipal corporations in the region, but Hutchinson, who is also the member of parliament for St Elizabeth North West, said the party is also ready to face the electorate when Prime Minister Andrew Holness announces the date of the local government elections.

“The only ones we have outstanding now are those in Westmoreland and Hanover, and we will definitely be controlling those and increasing our seat counts in all of them,” Hutchinson told The Gleaner on Monday.

“We are just about ready. We have all prospective candidates in place in every division, and there is going to be a big improvement in the number of seats that we have in the five parishes in the Area Council.”

While the results of previous polls are important and serve as a benchmark, the JLP deputy leader said he is not banking too much on the results of the past.

“I am not one that looks at past results. I look at the organisation on the ground in terms of the candidates’ interactions with the people in their respective divisions. Results are not one that I believe in too much,” argued Hutchinson.

REGION SIX

Wentworth Skeffery, deputy general secretary of the opposition Peoples’ National Party (PNP), said his party is well advanced in its preparation in terms of candidate selections in Region Six, which is JLP’s Region Four. He noted that while it would have lost several seats in the 2016 local government elections, the party was able to hold on to Hanover and Westmoreland.

“We are not leaving any of the parishes or taking them for granted, and our strategy is to approach all divisions individually, based on their needs and demography, as we seek to put back the PNP on the map in Region Six,” said Skeffery.

“In St James, in terms of the results in the last local government elections, we were not successful in all, but we are highly organised and structured. We have the three caucuses together and meeting. The idea is to hold on to those we have, and do all we can to win back some key seats the party had held for several years across the parishes. We hope to increase and return the leadership of the corporations to the columns of the PNP.”