LIME TREE, Trelawny – Former Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) loyalist Paul Patmore says he is busy preparing to bury the political career of Deputy Mayor of Falmouth Steve Warren (JLP) in the party’s stronghold of Lorrimers in the March 26 Local Government Elections.

The 40 year-old funeral director who failed in his bid to replace Warren as the party’s representative in the upcoming poll, said he has decided to contest the division as an independent candidate because he was snubbed by the hierarchy of the JLP in his quest replace Warren.

Warren has been the sitting councillor for the division since 1998.

Patmore believes however, that the veteran JLP councillor has not done much for the division.

“Mr Warren has been a councillor for 14 years now and he has nothing to show. Right now I have about a 90 per cent support in the division, but it is not about Paul Patmore, it is just that they don’t want Steve Warren,” Patmore told the Observer West.

But, Warren who won the division by a margin of 1,049 in the last parish council election to secure a third consecutive term, has accused Patmore of being “power hungry.”

He noted that since he was elected his representation has resulted in the installation of nearly 200 street lights in sections of the division, the rehabilitation of several roads, among other projects.

In the meantime, Patmore has recently established an irrigation water supply system in Lime Tree where he has run over 2,500 feet of pipeline from a spring in the community.

” The water project has been there over 100 years and people have been telling the member of parliament and the councillor about the water but according to them they would need $4 million to bring the water here, and I used less than $100,000 to bring water to the people,” he explained.

The tussle over the division ahead of Monday’s Nomination Day for the local government poll has reportedly resulted in a rift among JLP supporters in sections of the division.

Last Sunday, a JLP meeting which was scheduled to be addressed by Opposition Leader Andrew Holness; JLP spokesman on finance and planning, Audley Shaw; MP Marissa Dalrymple- Phillibert and other party functionaries was aborted after Patmore’s supporters allegedly disrupted the meeting.

Patmore who later told the Observer West that he regretted “the little shuffling” between Warren supporters and his supporters at the meeting, said he went to there in an effort to speak to the Opposition Leader about his candidacy when the fracas developed.

” We are all Labourites so we went to the meeting hoping that Mr Holness would make the decision that I represent the party. But the meeting broke up before he could speak,” he explained.