Only 29.6 per cent of the voting public cast their ballot in the recently concluded local government election based on preliminary results, as Jamaicans continued the trend of staying away from the polls to register their dissatisfaction with the performance of the two dominant parties.
While the majority intentionally withheld their votes, there were others who showed up to vote at polling divisions, but were turned off for one reason or the other. Portmore resident Kesa Barrett was shocked when she and others were told they could not vote for the mayor of their choice for the municipality. Barrett is a resident of Caribbean Estate, but based on a border realignment some years ago, her community and several others along the I-95 now fall under the Spanish Town constituency.
“It means then that we cannot vote for the Portmore mayoral candidate and that is upsetting to any resident of Portmore because Caribbean Estate is a very prominent community in Portmore,” she said.
She was told however that she could vote for the councillor of the division.
“I am interested in how Portmore is run, because I also have a business in the area, so I wanted my vote to count, in terms of who is the mayor for this municipality,” she told Freedom Come Rain.
She said when she got to the polling station, she saw about 10 other persons waiting in line to vote. Several of them left when the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) representative told them they could not vote for the mayor, only the councillor.
“It is a lot of confusion,” she said, noting that in the general election, they were able to vote for a St. Catherine South candidate.
Portmore is the only municipality that currently votes directly for its mayor.
Members of the security forces who were registered to vote at the National Police College of Jamaica at Twickenham Park in St Catherine were also unable to vote for a mayor for Portmore, last Thursday due to the absence of ballot papers. Based on preliminary results from the EOJ, the People’s National Party’s Leon Thomas won the Portmore mayoral race in St. Catherine. Thomas polled 14,921 votes, while his main challenger, the Jamaica Labour Party’s Markland Edwards polled 10,095. Independent candidate Howard Hamilton received 269 votes.
Up to Wednesday, the EOJ was unable to declare the final results for all of the parishes. The day before, the Director of Elections Glasspole Brown announced that the final counting of ballots for divisions in St Andrew East Rural were transferred to the head office of EOJ. There were also reports of representatives from the Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE) being excluded during counting in some divisions.
