THE Supreme Court yesterday refused the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) application for a judicial review of the magisterial recount in the Eastern Hanover constituency, effectively giving the go-ahead for the votes to be tallied today and a winner announced.

Lawyers for the JLP’s candidate, Barrington Gray, had on Monday filed an application in the Supreme Court, seeking leave for a judicial review of Magistrate George Burton’s decision to reject a number of ballots with the counterfoils bearing the returning officer’s signature torn off after previously accepting similar ballots.

As a result of the application for the judicial review, last Monday’s scheduled tally of the ballots and a declaration of a winner was put on hold.

In its application to Justice Marva McIntosh, Gray’s legal team gave notice that it would be asking the Judicial Review Court to order Burton to “count and include in his final tally of the votes the ballots which were improperly rejected [during his] examining and recounting”.

At the end of the two-day hearing yesterday, Justice McIntosh ruled that the magistrate was not acting outside the powers “conferred on him by the Representation of the People Act” in rejecting the ballots. She said further that to grant leave for a judicial review “would in this court’s view result in the court interjecting itself on the process before the magistrate, instead of acting in a supervisory role”.

“Judicial review is not an appeal procedure and does not consider the merits of any decision which may be challenged. Judicial review deals and concerns the validity of the decision and cannot determine whether decisions validly made are right or wrong on merit,” said the judge.

Yesterday, the People’s National Party (PNP) candidate for the hotly contested seat in the September 3 general elections, Dr D K Duncan, told reporters outside the court that the legal manoeuvres by Gray’s attorneys amounted to abuse of the court system and was “a continual delay of the will of the people”.

Duncan, a former MP, had told the Observer just over two weeks ago that by his tally he had won the election by 10 votes.

The seat had gone to the JLP’s Gray at the end of the official count for the September 3 general elections by a nine-vote majority. The magisterial recount was subsequently sought by Duncan.