SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Head of the Accompong Town Maroons, Ferron Williams, says elections which are now due will be held later this year — well before the annual January 6 celebrations.

Williams told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that the poll, which becomes due every five years, is being delayed because of a lack of money and also because of the need to update the Maroon voters’ list following the loss of records from the community’s archives.

“Part of the problem has to do with restoring records lost since the last election,” Williams said.

The Accompong Town colonel was responding to questions following complaints by critics that he is delaying the election without proper cause and that his administration has lost its way.

A former Maroon colonel Meredie Rowe accused the Williams administration of a lack of accountability and transparency and of allowing dangerous deterioration of Maroon “traditions and customs”.

“We have to do what we have to do to preserve Maroon legacy,” Rowe told the Observer.

Accompong Town is the primary recognised Maroon community in western Jamaica. There are similarly recognised Maroon villages in Portland and St Mary.

The Maroons are the descendants of Africans who fought British colonisers from mountain hideouts for decades following the eviction by the British of Spanish colonisers in the 1650s.

Every January 6 the Accompong Maroons celebrate the anniversary of the signing of a peace treaty with the British in the 1730s.

— Garfield Myers