Member of Parliament for Clarendon Northern Horace Dalley has scoffed at suggestions that he is in for a close fight with his challenger, the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP)Caswell Pinnock, a school principal, in the next general election expected within weeks.

Reports reaching the Jamaica Observer suggest that Dalley is fighting to save his seat, which he lost to the JLP’s Laurie Broderick in September 2007, but regained in the December 29, 2011 General Election.

When Dalley lost in 2007, he was the minister of health, the same portfolio that he holds now, having succeeded Dr Fenton Ferguson late last year.

Dr Ferguson is now minister of labour and social security.

Asked by the Sunday Observer on Wednesday after the rededication of three wards at the Kingston Public Hospital to comment on rumours that he was in trouble of retaining his seat, Dalley responded:

“I have not heard that, I have never heard that, and I can guarantee you that I am strong in my constituency, and none of the farm workers will be leaving this time around before the election.”

The reference to farm workers arose from suggestions in 2007 that he lost to Broderick because many of those who would have voted for him had gone away on the United States Farm Work Programme, and therefore were ineligible.

It would be a major setback for the ruling People’s National Party if Dalley were to stumble at the final hurdle on election day, which should be announced by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller at a mass meeting set for Half-way-Tree square this evening.

Dalley first won the seat — once regarded as a stronghold of the JLP — in 1989, beating former MP JAG Smith, a former minister of labour who served time in prison during the 1990s for stealing farm workers’ money while he was minister.

Smith had won the seat in 1976, 1980 and 1983 when the Michael Manley-led PNP boycotted the election over what it claimed was a flawed voters’ list.

Dalley retained the seat in the elections of 1993 over Edwin Singh, 1997 over Rupert Wilmot-Francis, and 2002 in his first triumph of Broderick, but suffered the shock loss to Broderick five years later in what some also said came down to a matter of complacency on the part of Dalley.

The now minister of health returned to Parliament in January 2012, after sending Broderick into political retirement, beating the younger brother of former Minister of Agriculture Dr Percival Broderick — 7663 to 5,958 votes.

The Clarendon Northern seat was created in 1967, when it was first won by the JLP’s George Atkinson over the PNP’s Robert Saunds.

Saunds returned the favour by beating Atkinson in 1972 when the PNP first came to power after Jamaica gained Independence from Great Britain in 1962, but the incumbent lost to Smith by a mere 13 votes in the 1976 General Election.