Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth – Juno Gayle, the regional officer of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) South Central Division, has been confirmed as the front runner to replace Lloyd Myrie as the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) candidate for North-West St Elizabeth in parliamentary elections due this year.

Myrie, a businessman who was selected last year to challenge incumbent member of parliament J C Hutchinson of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), recently withdrew for personal reasons. He was subsequently arrested on a carnal abuse charge.

PNP General-Secretary Donald Buchanan told the Sunday Observer yesterday that Gayle, a former school principal, was the only applicant for the North-West St Elizabeth seat.

“Comrade Gayle has applied and we will be carrying out the necessary consultations before making a decision very soon,” Buchanan – the incumbent member of parliament for South-West St Elizabeth who will step away from representational politics come the elections – said.

A well-placed Sunday Observer source said yesterday that Mandeville lawyer Donald Gittens, a St Elizabeth native, was also a contender to represent the ruling PNP against Hutchinson. However, Buchanan said Gittens had not applied for candidacy but was prepared to play a supporting role.

“Comrade Gittens has offered to assist the campaign of anyone who is chosen in order to help the PNP win the constituency,” Buchanan said.

Though North-West St Elizabeth is considered a traditional JLP “safe” seat, Hutchinson, who has often struggled to unite the JLP’s constituency organisation behind him, defeated the Rev Stanley Redwood by less than 200 votes in the 2002 elections. And prior to his recent resignation, Myrie and the PNP were said to be making gains.

Independent political analysts in St Elizabeth now say Myrie’s fall from grace means the JLP have a much improved opportunity to reverse the parliamentary position of the two parties in the parish and win three of the four seats on offer.

For his part, Buchanan insisted yesterday that the PNP remained confident of maintaining its parliamentary majority in the parish. “We are not worried,” he told the Sunday Observer.

But North-East St Elizabeth, being vacated by member of parliament, minister of agriculture Roger Clarke, who has moved on to Central Westmoreland, is now being seen by independent observers as the only “safe” seat for the PNP in St Elizabeth.

Senator Kern Spencer, who has taken over from Clarke in North-East St Elizabeth, is widely expected to hold off the challenge of the JLP’s Corris Samuels.

In South-East St Elizabeth – another traditional PNP seat – businessman Norman Horne, who controversially replaced member of parliament Len Blake as the PNP’s candidate, has been battling to unite the party’s constituency organisation behind him.

Independent observers say Horne – who has twice switched political sides and actually contested the Central Manchester seat in a losing effort for the JLP in 2002 – will be hard-pressed to stave off the JLP’s mayor of Black River Frank Witter, who only lost by 73 votes to his cousin, Blake, five years ago.

The JLP also looks good in South-West St Elizabeth – a seat held unbroken by Buchanan and the PNP since 1989. There, university lecturer and JLP senator, Dr Christopher Tufton, has been campaigning for years. Tufton will be opposed by Redwood, who only entered the constituency on behalf of the PNP late last year, replacing the previously selected candidate, businessman Anthony ‘Tern’ Ewen.