Jamaica’s main political parties will now engage their machinery in higher gear following last night’s revelation by Prime Minister Andrew Holness of a Monday, October 30 date for three by-elections.

Holness told hundreds of cheering supporters in the St Mary South Eastern town of Annotto Bay that Nomination Day to fill the vacancies in the House of Representatives will be on Monday, October 9.

The prime minister, close to the end of an address in which he called on Jamaicans to give him more time to work on crime, and chronicled his Administration’s achievements since it took power in February 2016, unveiled the much-anticipated date to which there was an immediate response from the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP).

“Now that the date has been given, we will do all that we have to do to make for a successful election,” PNP Chairman Fitz Jackson told the Jamaica Observer.

“The three candidates have been out there campaigning, and we intend to step up our efforts, particularly in St Mary South East,” Jackson said.

Apart from St Mary South Eastern, the other seats to be filled are St Andrew South Western and St Andrew Southern. The Electoral Commission of Jamaica had stated that it was prepared for the by-elections, although late last week it said it was still waiting on the first tranche of the $80-million budget to hold the polls.

The prime minister chose to announce the long-awaited date in St Mary as, according to political analysts, that seat will go down to the tape based upon recent general election results there.

The PNP held power in all three seats after the votes were counted in the February 25 General Election. However, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) won the majority of seats, nationally — 32-31 — the first time in Jamaica’s history that a general election had been decided by such a thin line.

The PNP is expected to retain the St Andrew seats by handsome margins, but it is likely that much fewer votes will determine the winner of the St Mary South Eastern seat. At the end of the count last year Dr Winston Green of the PNP had defeated the JLP’s Dr Norman Dunn by five votes, which triggered an election petition, which should have been heard in the Supreme Court. However, the untimely death of Dr Green made the petition irrelevant and necessitated a by-election.

In St Andrew South Western, former Member of Parliament and Prime Pinister Portia Simpson Miller stepped down from elective politics earlier this year, ending a career in the House of Representatives that started in 1976 and was disrupted only by the PNP’s boycott of Parliament between 1983 and 1989. She has been replaced as the PNP candidate by Angela Brown Burke, a former mayor of Kingston who was involved in a bitter row with Councillor Audrey Smith Facey to succeed Simpson Miller. The JLP has not officially revealed its candidate in that seat, but it is expected that regular ‘beating stick’ Victor Hyde will again be that sacrificial lamb.

In the adjoining St Andrew Southern seat, veteran parliamentarian Dr Omar Davies resigned at the same time as Simpson Miller last March, paving the way for the elevation of Mark Golding to represent the PNP. Golding, leader of Opposition Business in the Senate and former minister of justice, defeated Collington Campbell in the run-off. Like St Andrew South Western, the JLP has not officially declared a candidate yet for the seat. However, Dennis Messias, who has not grown tired of being whipped by a PNP opponent, is again expected to suffer another round of political humiliation when he sticks his neck out for the JLP as its candidate.

But all eyes will be centred on St Mary South Eastern, where two medical professionals will square off. Medical practitioner Shane Alexis, former president of the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association and the Medical Association of Jamaica, will have his political baptism when he goes up against Dunn, the holder of a doctoral degree in pharmacy. Both have expressed confidence in being triumphant.

Already there have been charges and counter charges about the manipulation of qualified voters, with the Opposition claiming that the Government had already started parochial work in the Belfield Division, which has not been lost by the PNP since 1986, while major roadwork is expected on the Junction Road, parts of which run through the divisions of Annotto Bay and Castleton. Both divisions were won by the JLP in the local government election of last November, but while Castleton is normally solidly behind the JLP (the PNP has won it only once in the last 20 years) the Annotto Bay Division has see-sawed between both parties in recent years.

The fourth division — Richmond — is now controlled by the JLP, represented in the St Mary Municipal Council by Mayor Richard Creary, a businessman and outstanding former youth cricketer who still plays the game. Creary lost to Dr Green in the General Election of December 2011 — the first time that the deceased dentist, who, like Dr Alexis, was trained in Cuba, was entering the House of Representatives.

There have also been claims, on both sides of supporters damaging or destroying the other’s billboards, reports of which have been submitted to the political ombudsman.

Yesterday, supporters of the JLP started gathering after 5:00 pm close to the town square, sandwiched by the Caribbean Sea and the decades-old police station, to hear some of the goodies that they anticipated Holness would share with them. No official time was given for Holness’ arrival, or his address, but that did not matter to the green-clad, cheering Labourites who stepped forward despite notification from the National Meteorological Service that rain could be an unwelcome visitor. In the end, the rain stayed away, despite sprinklings and sometimes heavy downpour on the periphery of the town and in sections of the adjoining St Andrew West Rural.

Party heavyweights Audley Shaw, Daryl Vaz and Desmond McKenzie energised the crowd with the kind of lyrical presentations that they wanted to hear before Prime Minister Andrew Holness arrived at 7:17 pm to tumultous applause and began his address less than 10 minutes later. By 7:45 the information that so many had waited for was unwrapped by the JLP Leader, ushering in another round of cheers and merrymaking.