Juliet Holness believes that her anticipated battle with Imani Duncan-Price for the St Andrew East Rural seat in the next general election will be decided on the basis of who the voters trust with representing their interests.

After 18 years in the shadow of her 43-year-old husband, Andrew — who became Jamaica’s ninth prime minister in October 2011 only to be relegated to leader of the Opposition by January 2012 — Juliet Holness says she is ready to leave her own footprints on the Jamaican political landscape by winning the seat in the next General Election.

She has no doubt that she will comfortably defeat Duncan-Price, who has emerged as the latest scion of the Duncan family — headed by veteran People’s National Party (PNP) former general secretary and 1970s mobiliser Dr DK Duncan — to seek election to the House of Representatives.

“I am not necessarily leaning on being the wife of the leader of the Opposition. I am a member of the Labour Party and have always worked quietly in the background. So, based on the call of so many people in East Rural to come and take the seat, I have decided to go in,” she said.

“I am intent on doing my very best to win and, having won, ensuring that I provide the level of service that will improve the infrastructure and human capital in the constituency,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

“For us, we are going to make every effort to have electronic voting in all the areas, to ensure that we have a free and fair election so that the candidate that the people desire to lead them is the ultimate winner on that election night. Once it is free and fair, and free from fear, I will be the winner on that night and I expect to win by a comfortable margin,” she stated.

She said that the failure of the PNP to meet its obligations to the constituents has been a serious blunder on the part of the governing party.

“I believe that they have spent most of their time focusing only on the areas where there is strong PNP support. When you become an MP you have to appreciate that you are there to serve your entire constituency. When the PNP wins East Rural St Andrew, no effort is made to improve the conditions in areas like Mavis Bank, Gordon Town, most of Kintyre Division and areas in Bull Bay and Harbour View that are supportive of the Labour Party,” she claimed.

“When you are campaigning, you are opponents, you are PNP and JLP: When you win, you serve your entire constituency, and that does not happen here under the PNP,” she said.

“In any constituency, what the people actually want is for you to do your job. You ask them to let you represent them and they give you the opportunity to represent them. They don’t want the focus to be anything other than them and representing them.

“They appreciate that you have family and you will have your business, but your priority, in addition to those two things, should be the people in your seat. Once you do that, you are going to be comfortable winning your seat over and over,” she added.

Her confidence and experience in electioneering seem to have been developed over close to 20 years of working with her husband to turn the volatile St Andrew West Central constituency into a relatively safe seat for him, winning it four times in a row.

She suddenly found herself standing in the spotlight in St Andrew East Rural when the JLP’s original candidate, Senator Alexander Williams, stepped aside after informing the party that his busy schedule as an attorney-at-law would not allow him to do the level of campaigning needed to win the seat.

In fact, Williams had been feeling the weight of trying to organise the second largest constituency in the Corporate Area — with 36,655 registered voters — for some time and had invited Holness’s support in getting his machinery readied for the next poll. But after he backed out, leaving the field open for Holness, JLP supporters clamoured for her candidacy.

People who don’t know her might well consider her too quiet and shy to organise such a difficult constituency for the JLP, much more to challenge for its leadership. However, Senator Williams and the JLP organisation there seem to have every confidence in her ability to win the seat for them in the next general election.

“It has a level of difficulty, because it is one of the largest constituencies, but it is very winnable for the JLP, very winnable,” Williams told the

Observer after the JLP secretariat had confirmed that Holness was the people’s and the party’s choice.