THEY may be on opposite sides of the political fence but the People’s National Party’s Colin Fagan and the Jamaica Labour Party’s Arthur Williams have agreed on one thing so far – that the issue of the Portmore toll affected the votes in the South East St Catherine constituency.

Fagan, who succeeded fellow party member Paul Robertson as the PNP candidate earlier this year, won the seat by 335 votes, amassing a total of 7,292 to Williams’ 6,957.

Both parties experienced an increase when compared to the 6,805 who voted PNP and the 5,443 electors who voted JLP in the 2002 general election when only 49 per cent of the 26,073 registered voters in that constituency voted. However, both men say things could have gone differently, had it not been for the toll issue.

“.I think a lot of PNP people who felt the toll was an issue may have stayed home on that basis, but they didn’t vote for the JLP,” Fagan told the Observer.

“We managed to pull out 335 more votes so we would have been doing much better than Robertson, but the toll issue definitely played a part in the overall numbers,” Fagan added.

As far as Williams was concerned, the impasse between the PNP government and Portmore residents over the toll road worked to his advantage.

“I believe the toll issue led to more support for me and to a lack of support for him [Fagan]”, he said.

“The majority of the votes he got were in Waterford and Portsmouth which are PNP strongholds but in the other areas, I got the majority,” Williams said.

The JLP candidate also pointed out that he got more votes than in the 2002 elections, moving from 5,443 to 6,957 in Monday’s polls. The major reason for that, according to Williams, was the people’s displeasure at the PNP’s handling of the toll issue.

“I got more votes than I did last time but the PNP were able to rally their supporters in the two PNP strongholds,” he said, as he congratulated his opponent for having not only won his seat, but having amassed more votes than his predecessor did in 2002, a feat which he said was “really remarkable”.

Meanwhile, Fagan said his first order of business as the constituency’s elected official would be to address housing development concerns, especially for informal settlers on Railway Lane and for residents of Portmore Gardens who have been leasing for many years.

“I will have to work to build my own self in the constituency because I’m not well known,” said Fagan, who himself is a resident of Portmore.