DECLARING the spirits of JLP supporters to be high after the party’s strong showing in last month’s general elections, Opposition Leader Edward Seaga said yesterday that the party would go all out to win the local government elections which are to be held by the end of next March.

At the same time, Seaga said that with its strength in Parliament he would insist that the government comes to terms with the issues that the JLP wants on the national agenda and that the Opposition intended to “call the shots”.

“There are times ahead in which the JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) is going to be acknowledged to be the party that is, in effect, calling the shots,” Seaga told party delegates from Kingston and St Andrew at a meeting at the Chinese Benevolent Society in Kingston.

Seaga’s party has been in Opposition for more than 13 years, having lost four straight general elections since 1989.

But in the national election of October 16 it increased its seats in the 60-member House of Representatives from 12 to 26. Buoyed by this showing, Seaga is expecting that his party will grab several, if not the majority of the 13 parish councils, in the municipal elections.

“The spirit of the Jamaica Labour Party supporters is still very high and we are counting on that to mobilise for the upcoming parish council elections,” Seaga told the party workers. “The JLP has won eight of the 15 seats in the Corporate Area and if you check the votes in the general elections along parish council lines both parties would be tied 20-20.”

The Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC), which runs Kingston and the adjoining parish of St Andrew, is the country’s largest council.

Parish council elections are to be held every three years, but the last one was in 1998 when the PNP won all the local governments. The poll that was to have been held last year was put off ostensibly to allow for the unveiling of a local government reform plan, but the delay was likely to have been part of the PNP’s political calculation leading into this October’s national election.

In March last year the PNP lost a crucial by-election in what was thought to be a safe seat in North East St Ann and most analysts did not believe that the party wanted to risk allowing the

JLP to take the momentum from that victory into the municipal poll. The fear, analysts say, was that if the JLP won, then at the local level the same momentum would have taken it to victory in the general elections.

His intention for the local government apart, Seaga said that the JLP intended to parlay its “largest opposition that has ever sat in Gordon House in our entire history” into an effective tool to ensure that it has a powerful influence on the decisions of the government.

“One way we can go is to make sure that the government realises that it will not have an easy time governing if it does not sit down with the Opposition and come to terms about things that are of deep concern to us,” Seaga said.

He stressed that the JLP was not prepared to compromise its role as an opposition just for the sake of co-operation.

“There are certain things and certain areas that we can co-operate on for the good of the country,” Seaga said. However, there would not be “co-operation to the extent that we give up our role as an Opposition. No way, no time”.