Jamaicans will vote in parish council elections on Monday, November 28, Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie announced yesterday, eliciting loud cheers from Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) parish councillors and aspirants inside the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston.

In a swift response at a planned news conference, the People’s National Party (PNP) welcomed the announcement and vowed that it would retain all 13 parish councils as well as the Portmore Municipal Council which it won at the last local government poll on March 26, 2012.

In that election, the PNP won 151 divisions and the mayorships of all the councils. The JLP won 75 divisions, while two independent candidates won divisions.

Yesterday, McKenzie said that candidates for the country’s first local government elections in four years, one year more than the three-year limit, would be nominated next week Friday, November 11.

The Kingston and St Andrew Corporation council is expected to be dissolved before Tuesday’s scheduled monthly council meeting. The other councils, including the Portmore municipality, are expected to follow suit prior to nomination day.

The two major political parties – the JLP and PNP – are expected to nominate candidates in all 228 divisions across the island. Other much smaller parties as well as individuals are expected to swell the total number of candidates close to 500.

Prime Minister and JLP leader Andrew Holness told yesterday’s meeting that the JLP was not calling the election “for calling it sake”, or because the party wanted to change the membership of the councils.

“We have a plan, and we need to have the local representatives who understand that part of the vision of prosperity is to be in the communities, in the divisions, to be working the constituencies to ensure that the prosperity plan of every single Jamaican becomes a reality,” said Holness, who went directly to the conference centre after returning from Trinidad where he attended the 2016 High Level Caribbean Forum staged by the International Monetary Fund.

He also warned the prospective candidates that Jamaican electors are not going to vote because they have traditionally supported the party.

He said that even those who traditionally support a party have now reached the stage where they feel that they must hold their representatives to account.

“You must do something to earn their support,” he warned his party’s prospective candidates.

He said that the charge that the party gives its local government candidates is no lesser standard than what is given to candidates for the general election.

“And so, the posture of the Government, which is executed by the MPs and ministers, is inseparable. That is the first signal to the voters that you care,” he urged.

In his address, McKenzie noted that many of Jamaica’s best political leaders and representatives have emerged from the JLP and from local government.

“We want to shift the balance of power and put it in the hands of a party which cares about the people,” he said, making reference to the slogan ‘We Care’ which the party is using for the election.

JLP chairman and Minister of National Security Robert Montague also addressed the meeting. He said that the party takes local government very seriously, “because we respect the people of Jamaica”. According to Montague, the party was calling the election to show that it is serious about the development of local government.

Also present at the meeting were Minister of Finance and the Public Service Audley Shaw, JLP General Secretary and Minister Without Portfolio Dr Horace Chang, and fellow Cabinet ministers Olivia “Babsy” Grange and Shahine Robinson.