GOVERNOR-GENERAL Professor Kenneth Hall is at this point “very clear in his mind” about his options should the August 27 general elections end in a tie, his secretary Rosemarie Gibbs said yesterday from King’s House.

But Gibbs, who is the equivalent of the chief executive officer of the residence of The Queen’s representative in Jamaica, said only the governor-general could say what he would do if and when the time comes.

She said, however, that Professor Hall had been “pretty much proactive” on the issue of how to resolve a potential 30-30 seat tie in the elections.

“His Excellency knows that it is really his call and at this point in time he is very clear in his mind on what to do in such an eventuality,” Gibbs said in response to Observer queries.

The spectre of an electoral crisis which would arise if the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party got an equal number of seats, was raised this week by constitutional lawyer, Dr Lloyd Barnett, who lambasted politicians for not making provisions to avoid a potential tie.

Barnett, head of the electoral watchdog organisation, Citizens Action For Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE), suggested that the present constitutional arrangements did not make provisions for breaking a tie, and it would be left to the governor-general to find a resolution.

Confirmation that the representative of the head of state had begun to inform himself on the best way forward, first came Wednesday from the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica, Professor Errol Miller.

But Gibbs said Hall had been deliberating on the matter long before. “For example, he held a meeting of law students from the Norman Manley Law School at the University of the West Indies, to discuss the question of a tie in the elections,” she said.

“In that respect,” Gibbs added, “it is not true to say he is any agony,” Gibbs said in reference to an Observer headline “The G-G’s agony” in yesterday’s edition.