THE ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) is set to increase its majority in the House of Representatives today, after winning one of the three seats contested in last Monday’s by-elections in St Andrew and St Mary.

All three seats were won by the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) in the February 2016 general election. But the Government, by virtue of taking one of those seats — St Mary South Eastern — from the PNP, will now be able to expand its majority in the House from a single seat (32-31) to three seats (33-30).

However, despite today’s planned swearing-in, the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) was unable to provide the final results of the three by-elections up to last night.

The ECJ had informed the media last Thursday that the final counting of ballots for the October 30 by-elections in St Andrew Southern, St Andrew South Western and St Mary South Eastern were complete. They began counting on Tuesday, October 31 and concluded on Wednesday, November 1.

The commission, in a release, said then that it was awaiting the reports from the returning officers, which were due within seven days after completing the final count.

Director of Elections Orrette Fisher said last night that although he had received the final results from the returning officers last Friday, they would not be released until they have been verified.

“I am not going to give out information we may have to change,” Fisher told the Jamaica Observer last night.

But, Gordon House confirmed yesterday that they had received the writ from the ECJ, enabling it to go ahead with the swearing-in. The clerk has since invited the leadership of both sides of the House to have their new members sworn in.

Acting Leader of the House Everald Warmington confirmed last night that all three newly elected MPs would be sworn in at 2:00 pm today.

In the by-elections, the PNP easily retained the two urban “political garrisons” of St Andrew South Western, which had been held by former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller up to her resignation on June 29, and St Andrew Southern, which was held by former finance and planning, and transport, works and housing minister, Dr Omar Davies, until his resignation on the same date.

Former Minister of Justice and Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Mark Golding, who is now set to become the Opposition’s spokesman on finance and chairman of the powerful Public Accounts Committee, won in St Andrew Southern, defeating the JLP’s Dane Dennis by 6,095 to 894, while former senator, Dr Angela Brown Burke, defeated the JLP’s Victor Hyde by 6,325 to 223.

The JLP won the only competitive of the three by-elections, in St Mary South Eastern, with their candidate Dr Norman Dunn, who lost by only five votes to Dr Winston Green in 2016, scoring 8,176 to the PNP’s Dr Shane Alexis’s 7,239 this time around.

By winning this seat, the JLP was able to move to 33 seats in the 63-seat House from its previous 32, while the PNP fell to 30.