ANDREW Holness’s St Andrew West Central seat has been under the microscope recently, with questions raised about the ability of the man who is likely to be the next prime minister to maintain his dominance in an area that was once labelled firm territory of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP).

Created for the 1959 general election, the seat has been won seven times in contested elections by the PNP and four by the Jamaica Labour Party.

The PNP’s William Seivright, after whom a section of the constituency is named, wrote the first chapter in the area’s political history by defeating hot shot lawyer, the JLP’s Ian McDonald Ramsay by a landslide in 1959.

Seivright polled 11,397 votes to Ramsay’s 6,792 with a 65 per cent voter turnout of the 27,242 electors on the voters’ list.

That Seivright victory was repeated in 1962, another landslide over the JLP’s Maxwell T Wynter, whose 7,814 votes paled in comparison to Seivright’s mammoth 13,508. The People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP’s) Millard Johnson’s 1,014 votes remain the best showing by any third party.

The PNP dominance continued in 1967 with former finance minister David Coore triumphing over Una Joyce Hill of the JLP and again in 1972 when Coore defeated lawyer Frank Phipps by a landslide.

By then, the political heat in the constituency began to boil over, and leading up to the bruising 1976 general election, indications were that the dynamics would change.

Carl “Russian” Thompson, who replaced Coore for the PNP, managed to garner 9,147 votes to thrash Ira Ashman (5,066 votes) in 1976.

Gun killings marred that campaign, but it was the election of 1980 that saw political violence reach heights that most of the 20,692 electors on the voters list and those close to them had not bargained for.

Police statistics showed that West Central St Andrew recorded the most deaths in any one constituency, with 39 per cent of the roughly 800 recorded murders during the long campaign occurring in areas of the constituency like Olympic Gardens, Mall Road, Tower Hill, Balcombe Drive and Waterhouse.

Ferdinand Yap went on to secure the JLP’s first victory on October 30, 1980, thumping Thompson with 10,590 votes to 7,726.

Like the 1976 election, claims of bogus voting, ballot stuffing and intimidation clouded electon day activities in the constituency.

The JLP remained in control after the uncontested election of 1983, but it was soon time again for PNP domination with the coming of attorney-at-law Arnold J Nicholson to the area.

Nicholson sent Yap into retirement after securing 13,102 votes to the incumbent’s 10,458 in the 1989 general election.The outspoken former attorney general secured his pension as a Member of Parliament with another comfortable victory in 1993, that time over the JLP’s George Broomfield (11,774 to 6,193 votes).

A dispute with party functionaries in the constituency caused Nicholson to opt out of the race by the time of the 1997 election, which paved the way for young surgeon Warren Blake to go up against an equally hungry Andrew Holness out of the stables of then Opposition Leader Edward Seaga.

The official count will show that Holness beat Blake narrowly, 5328 votes to 5263, but that was at the end of three elections, held in December 1997, March 1998 and May 1998, caused by what election officials cited as irregularities in the system.

On the night of the first count, Blake tallied 8,436 votes to Holness’ 8,314. However, when the recount was held, Holness got more votes, but the achievement was tainted by the mysterious disappearance of one box from a PNP stronghold and what officials then said was tampering with three others.

The subsequent re-election in March saw Blake winning by 350 votes, but further claims of skullduggery forced the then Constituted Authority to order re-voting in certain polling divisions, resulting in victory for Holness.

There was no such drama in 2002 when Holness flogged newcomer Patrick Roberts (6,854 votes to 5,436), in a contest that also had another man with the exact same name running as an independent candidate. The move, which the PNP felt was designed to confuse voters, may or may not have influenced the outcome, since Roberts, the independent candidate, got 82 votes, bettering the NDM/NJA candidate Lilian James who received 39 votes.

Holness increased his majority by 79 in 2007 (6,933 – 5,875), again over Roberts, who analysts say is unlikely to defeat the bright St Catherine High School former head boy in any election.

The PNP has still not confirmed Roberts as the candidate in the general election due, by the latest, December 2012, although it had said last year that the business executive and sports administrator would not represent the party again after he was criminally charged with a gun-related offence.