GOVERNOR-GENERAL Kenneth Hall is currently agonising over what might be his first major test since assuming the office over a year ago – resolving a potential tie in the number of seats won by the two major political parties in the soon-to-be held polls.

With a 30-30 seat tie being a distinct statistical possibility, the former university principal was conducting intensive consultations in order to determine his options, ahead of the August 27 general elections, electoral officials revealed yesterday.

“The responsibility to take any action on that matter resides with the governor-general. He has asked us to give him some advice on the matter, he himself having taken some preliminary advice,” said chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), Professor Errol Miller.

Dr Lloyd Barnett, chairman of the local election watchdog group, Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE), on Tuesday raised the spectre of a poll crisis, accusing Jamaica’s political leaders of recklessness for leaving the country open to the possibility of a tie.

“We are debating it,” Miller told a meeting with journalists at the Hilton Hotel in New Kingston, pointing to Professor Hall as the man who would be at the centre, if the general elections were too close to call after voting on election day.

But it was apparent that The Queen’s representative in Jamaica would not have an easy job, as the constitution is said to be silent on the present situation in which the number of seats is even at 60.

“The political parties would have to work out a compromise. It would obviously be a very difficult political crisis which cannot be solved by any legal formula,” Barnett told the Observer last night.

“Essentially, it would have to be the politicians because they can’t advise him (the G-G) to do anything which could be enforced,” he added.

Invited to speculate, Barnett said it was possible for the governor-general to elect one individual from either party to act as prime minister “for a limited time”, pending another general elections to see if the results would differ. Or until the number of constituencies could be changed.

“But for it to work any at all would require some sort of accommodation by both parties,” he added.

Yesterday, Miller refused to attribute any blame as to who was responsible for the fact that there were still 60 constituencies. Instead, he said the ECJ had met the required stipulations in submitting the constitutional amendment that would be required to increase the upper limits of the number of constituencies into which Jamaica should be divided.

“.That was done but it wasn’t taken before Parliament was prorogued in March, and the advice the minister with responsibility for electoral matters (Dr Peter Phillips) received was that it had to start over,” Miller explained.

The Jamaica Labour Party’s ‘Tom’ Tavares-Finson, an alternate member of the Commission, noted that there would have been difficulties even if the amendments had been made.

“To be fair, even if the Constitutional amendments had been taken by Parliament in the normal course of things, we would not have been able to either decrease to an odd number or increase to an odd number,” Tavares-Finson said.

Under the Law, a period of general review of boundaries has to take place a minimum of four years and a maximum of six years after the last review, which was March 8, 2004. The next period of general review would fall in March of 2008 and should end in March of 2010.

Selected Member Justice Clarence Walker noted that when the matter of the odd number of seats was debated the idea had been to increase the upper limits to 65. It was agreed, however, that such a move would not take place before mid-way into the term of office of the government because it would pose problems to representation.

Furthermore, he said: “If you reorganise seats early in a period then people would know that I’m representing an area that I’m not going to represent (later) and it would pose problems to representation. I think that problem will present itself again when the next period of general review comes up,” he added.

For his part, Director of Elections Danville Walker said that even with an odd number of seats, there was still the possibility of a tie, in particular, if independent candidates were involved in the process.

JLP selected Member Karl Samuda, giving his take on the situation, bemoaned the fact that “over the years the legislators have allowed it to languish”.