KINGSTON Mayor Desmond Mckenzie says the 22 Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) councillors in Kingston and St Andrew are prepared to march on Jamaica House to demand that the local government (parish council) elections be held by December 31.

Mckenzie’s remarks came yesterday at a JLP Area Council One (Kingston and St Andrew) meeting at the Duhaney Park Primary School,

Those in attendance came out strongly in support of recent calls by Opposition Leader Bruce Golding for the elections to be held before year end.

McKenzie, who is also chairman of Area Council One, and the party’s deputy leader for the area council, Derrick Smith, told hundreds of supporters attending the monthly meeting that they fully supported Golding’s call, and would not accept any further delay in holding these elections.

Mckenzie said the JLP councillors were prepared to face being teargassed again for marching on Jamaica House, this time to demand that the election be held. He was making reference to the police’s teargassing of about 50 JLP councillors who had marched to Jamaica House on November 14 last year to demand additional funding for road and bridge repairs, in the wake of multiple hurricane damage since 2004. The mayor was treated at the nearby Andrews Memorial Hospital and sent home after the incident. The police justified their actions under sections six and 21 of the Public Order Act.

Yesterday, Mckenzie noted that in June the government had used the excuse that the voters list was not yet ready, to postpone the elections to the period ending December 31, 2006. However, he said that this time the Opposition would not accept any “three card trick”.

The mayor also pointed out that after the JLP lost local government elections in 1986 and then lost the government in 1989, no local government election was held until 1998 and, after that, none until 2003 (when the JLP took control of the KSAC), although the constitution requires that these elections be held every three years.

He said that the JLP was not going to allow the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) to return to that timetable, but would be insisting that the constitutional cycle be maintained and the elections called before the end of 2006.

He said that the JLP had never won back-to-back local government elections but, this time, the PNP was scared that the precedent was about to change. He said that with Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller having emerged from the KSAC, as well as being a former minister of local government, he expects her to show respect for the process.

“If she has any respect for the local authorities, I say fly the gate,” McKenzie told cheering JLP supporters mainly from the West St Andrew constituency which is headed by the councillor for Duhaney Park and JLP caretaker Joyce Young.

“When we marched for money to fix your roads, I was teargassed. But, I say to you that the local government elections will have to be held this year and if we have to resort to bangarang then bangarang it must be,” McKenzie warned.