HANOVER, Jamaica — The People’s National Party (PNP) is expected to make a decision on the outcome of Sunday’s councillor candidate selection process in the Sandy Bay division of Hanover Eastern, which ended in a tie.

The secretariat of the party became involved following a contentious voting process and controversial result.

The PNP’s Lloyd Hill is the current councillor of the Sandy Bay division.

However, Hill, who has served the division for more than a decade as councillor and also several years as mayor of Lucea, will not be running in the next Local Government elections.

Those vying to replace Hill are: Andria Dehaney Dinham, principal of the Maryland All-age School in the parish and Gregory Allen, a teacher who recently returned to the island after furthering his studies in international law.

The contention started shortly before voting at 10:00 am after one of the candidates brought in a list with names of people registered to vote. That list was later rejected.

But things reached boiling point at the end of voting with the announcement of the winner.

Some supporters became boisterous after Donald Colomathi, who oversaw the day’s proceedings, announced the voting ended in a tie at 49/49.

Colomathi said that in a situation such as this, “the constituency organisation, executive could maybe play a role, but first we have to be guided by the party’s directive. There could be a rerun and under an investigation, whatever the result is will guide the process.”

The party’s General Secretary Paul Burke is expected to make known his decision by Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Dehaney Dinham said she was confident of victory as she has been working in the party from she was in high school.

“Before I was 18 years old, I have been coming to meetings with my mother and other family members. And so I have been working in the Sandy Bay division for such a long time and I had great confidence in coming forward in representing my division,” said Dehaney Dinham.

She added: “Today I think the proceedings went fairly well. There was some problem this morning with my group and so a decision was made to remove that group from the listing.”

For his part, Allen said that some people had cited irregularities, but he is “not going off that route”.

“It is very disappointing. For one, the same irregularities, I have seen it in action and I decided to keep it clean, walk the straight and narrow,” Allen said. “And then you hear people telling you that the party hierarchy called them to lend their support. But, at the end of the day, as I said I will kept it clean. I was up against an entire army and I did well. They still couldn’t beat me. So, let’s see what happen from here.”

Anthony Lewis