Catherine Hall, St James

Secure in a comfortable victory that will see him retaining his role as member of parliament for West Central St James, the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP), Clive Mullings, is laughing at the pollsters who doubted his capacity to beat the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Francis Tulloch for the seat.

Tulloch, a veteran of the PNP which has ceded victory to the JLP after an 18-plus-year reign, lost the seat by a margin of 554 votes in Monday’s national polling exercise.

Citing organisation and an uncommon love between himself and his workers as the key to his victory over Tulloch, Mullings scathingly dedicated the win to “Ian Boxhill and others who doubted the capacity of our people to deliver when the time came”. I have always said from the very beginning, I don’t follow polls and this is coming from me when I started doing polling with Carl Stone… I realised that in this field that anything can happen because there are so many people who are doing polls now,” Mullings told the Observer West in an interview minutes after he was declared the winner.

He said many persons had asked him how he felt during the run-up to the election. “I said to them ‘I don’t give in to complacency or feelings, I give in to organisation, empirical data and that is what has brought us through, the hard work of my management team and our workers’.”

Asked what made the difference for him at the polls he said, “I still believe that people want a change. I still believe they need vision, they need hope and it is not a question now of running a seat for a political party to get into power… they know I don’t quit. I’ve always been an advocate for the people of this country and of this constituency and I will continue to fight and expose the wrongs and try to make their lives better, that is what has moved me to get involved in politics in the first place, and I will not resign from that position, it is not about power it is about people.”

An impassioned Mullings told the Observer West he had not been following the ‘big picture,’ “as I have been forced to concentrate on my efforts here. I have been forced to concentrate on working with my people. I love my people this is no ordinary love, this didn’t start yesterday by virtue of this election. We have come through thick and thin, we have argued but we have come together as a team and my workers and my management team delivered today and I owe it all to them and my God”.

Mullings scored heavily in the polling divisions in West Green and said he expected the wide margins there. “We realised from the very beginning it had to be the enumeration process and organisation. We were very organised today, despite the threat of hurricane, workers brought the voters out because they believe in the leadership they were being offered,” he said.