LUCEA, Hanover — Former People’s National Party (PNP’s) councillor and mayor of Lucea Moncrieffe Leslie has signalled his intention to return to representational politics, almost 12 years after retiring in the wake of an upset defeat by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP’s) Keturah Archer Carey.

Citing a lack of quality representation on the part of most of the present crop of councillors at the Hanover Parish Council, Leslie said he has already applied to the PNP to represent the Lucea division in the next local government polls.

“I was interviewed by the party’s Regional Selection Committee from about February,” he told the Observer West.

The Lucea division is currently represented by the JLP’s Easton Edwards who defeated the PNP’s Paul Trench in the 2007 local government polls.

Trench told the Observer West yesterday that he still has an interest in contesting the division.

But he pointed out that he would only do so if he is assured of the support of at least 70 per cent of the roughly 120 delegates in the division.

The 52-year-old Leslie who is a Life Underwriter and a Justice of the Peace served as councillor for the Chester Castle division in Hanover between 1986 and 1998.

Between 1990 and 1997 he acted as mayor of Lucea as well as parish council chairman, due to the illness of the then sitting mayor, Councillor Lascelles Williams.

In 1997, Leslie was promoted to mayor, after Williams decided to vacate his council seat, due to fading health.

But a year later, the young, vibrant and small-framed Carey sent the high-riding mayor packing, defeating him by more than 200 votes in the Chester Castle division, in the local government elections of that year.

After the shocking defeat, Leslie said, he continued to support the party’s organisation in Hanover and worked closely with the party’s candidates in the parish.

On Tuesday, Leslie branded some of the sitting councillors at the Hanover Parish Council ” as loose cannons” and “lacking in vision.”

“No one there is accountable to anybody; no one there is co-ordinating for the development of the parish,” Leslie emphasised.

He charged that since 1998 not much has been achieved by that local body.

” Nothing much has been done since my time. The farmers in the parish are not better off; no body is looking for investors; the reclaiming of the 90 acres of land in Lucea has not been done; visitors at the hotels in the parish have nowhere to go and the town of Lucea needs to be flushed,” he said.

The Opposition PNP presently has political control of Hanover Parish Council. In the 2007 local government polls, the party won five of the seven divisions in the parish.

Its current chairman, Lloyd Hill, is now in his second term as chair of that local authority, having served in that capacity from 1998- 2003.

Between 2003 and 2007, the council was controlled by the JLP.

Leslie who is aspiring to once again head that local authority, lists some of the achievements of the council during his tenure as :

* the construction of the Mount Peto Health Centre;

* the refurbishing of water tanks in several communities;

* the construction of five basic schools;

* the construction and refurbishing of several miles of roads; and

* the establishment of the West Haven Children Home for the Disabled.