THREE men are adamant that Opposition Leader Andrew Holness can suffer a general election defeat in the parliamentary seat that he now holds.

With that in mind, they have all applied to the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) to represent the organisation in the constituency of St Andrew West Central in the next general election, although the incumbent has virtually turned the area into a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) fortress.

Although it was a stronghold of the PNP, Holness has made the seat his own since 1997 following a wrangle with noted orthopaedic surgeon Dr Warren Blake of the PNP, now president of the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association.

Those who have applied are councillor for the Molynes Division in the Kingston & St Andrew Corporation, Patrick Roberts, who has run against Holness unsuccessfully, since 2002; real estate developer Junior Stewart, who gave up the Molynes divisional seat to Roberts in the 2012 local government polls; and attorney-at-law Charles Ganga-Singh.

The secretariat of the PNP has not yet disclosed when the vote by delegates will take place, but from all indications, all three have “reasonable” support from delegates, one official close to things told the Jamaica Observer.

St Andrew West Central has three municipal divisions: Seivright Gardens, Olympic Gardens — both controlled by the JLP — and Molynes.

In the last general election, December 2011, there were 26,326 electors accredited to vote, but only 14,677 did so, representing a voter turnout of 55.75 per cent. Holness polled 7,799 votes, to Roberts’s 6,760 — a margin of victory of a mere 1,039.

Roberts, who has had considerable support from members of the PNP hierarchy, could find himself having to yield to either of his challengers, as the party tries to put pressure on Holness.

Critics of the PNP have said that had the party pumped more resources and put a higher-profile candidate into the seat over the last three elections, the result might have been different, considering the organisation’s big boast of winning seven times out of 12 contested elections.

One senior party source said that music producer Roberts, president of Arnett Gardens Football Club, had also whispered to party officials at the end of the 2011 election that he would not contest any further election in the seat if the party found a good and suitable candidate.

Calls made to Roberts’s cellular phone went unanswered.

One senior member of the party’s powerful National Executive Council said that it was time for Roberts to stay away from contesting further elections in the constituency, as he would continue to lose as long as Holness was around.

“Roberts’s time has passed, and he should realise by now that the majority of the people do not want him to be their MP,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

“In addition to that, apart from some die-hard and hard-core PNP supporters, no one seriously thinks that Roberts would ever beat Holness, although at one time the PNP was the dominant party,” the official said.

Junior Stewart, apart from his ability as a real estate developer, is well known in sports circles for assisting with the management of cricket teams like Kingston Cricket Club and his alma mater Kingston College.

Ganga-Singh, who is also involved in the production and presentation of recorded music, is known for being the man in the background, who has helped to fight many election court cases lately for PNP candidates.

His peers regard him as a shrewd lawyer who has not been given his due praise, mainly because of his nature as one who shies away from the limelight. “I will relish the challenge if it is afforded to me,” was all Ganga-Singh was willing to divulge when the Sunday Observer contacted him on Friday.

Stewart avoided going into detail about a possible fight for the seat: “It is something that I am considering,” was all he would tell the Sunday Observer.

Voting in St Andrew West Central was introduced for the first time in the 1959 General Election, won by the PNP, with the party’s William Seivright — after whom Seivright Gardens is named — handsomely defeating the JLP’s Ian McDonald Ramsay, a well-known barrister-at-law.

Seivright polled 11,397 votes to Ramsay’s 6,792

Seivright again won by landslide in the 1962 election, defeating the JLP’s Maxwell Wynter and Millard Johnson of the PPP.

By 1967, noted high-profile lawyer David Coore, QC, marked a hat-trick of wins for the PNP by brushing aside Una Hill of the JLP, and followed that with victory over fellow popular lawyer Frank Phipps, QC, of the JLP and Independent candidate Ainsworth Campbell.

Coore switched to St Andrew Western by the time the 1976 General Election came around, thus allowing first-timer Carl ‘Russian’ Thompson to maintain the PNP’s dominance by whipping Ira Ashman by over 4,000 votes (9,147 to 5,066).

However, the PNP’s unblemished reign was disrupted in the bloody 1980 General Election when Thompson lost (7,726 -10,590) to Ferdie Yap. Police said at the time that of the 844 murders recorded nationally at the height of the election campaign, that lasted seven months, close to half that number were either slain in St Andrew West Central, or the victims were from that constituency.

The PNP returned to glory in the 1989 general election when attorney-at-law Arnold ‘AJ’ Nicholson sent Yap into retirement with a comfortable win — 13,102 to 10,458 — and followed that victory with another triumph in the 1993 poll, that time over George Bloomfield (11,774 to 6,193).

Upon Nicholson’s retirement from elective politics by the time the 1997 election came around, Holness began his unbroken four-term dominance after he was declared the winner with 5,328 votes to Blake’s 5,263 and the National Democratic Movement’s (NDM’s) Steve Daley, 27. All of this came after Blake was first declared the winner and sworn in by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. However, a magisterial recount resulted in Holness being declared the victor.

He beat Roberts in the 2002, 2007 and 2011 elections, although not by compelling margins.

In 2002, Holness secured 6,854 votes against Roberts’s 5,436. An independent candidate, coincidentally named Patrick Roberts, got 82 votes, and Lillian James of the NDM polled 39 votes in that election.

In 2007, Holness gained only a further 79 votes (6,933) on his haul five years before, while Roberts stretched his support to 5,875 votes — an additional 439 over 2002.