THE by-election in the Yallahs Division of St Thomas Western scheduled for this Friday will certainly place a lot of attention on this very historical and important corner of south-eastern Jamaica with its political diversity and a history that takes us all the way back to the period of Spanish colonisation.

During that period, most of what we now know as the parish of St Thomas was more or less two very large Spanish ranches known as Yallahs and Morant (or Hato Ayala and Hato Morante) in the wake of Spanish occupation after 1509. With the British conquest in 1655 came the “parish” system that initially amounted to only seven parishes, which included St Thomas with Morant Bay as its capital, and the parish of St David with its capital at Yallahs.

St David would exist for over 200 years until it was merged with St Thomas in 1866, when the parishes were reduced from 22 to 14.

Today, the coastal town of Yallahs is a bustling hub of activity and the main town in the St Thomas Western constituency on the A4 principal highway easterly out Kingston, with a population of 10,849 (STATIN 2011 census), which is nearly as much as the parish capital and actually ranks 14th in the island.

With its beaches and other coastal advantages, a variety of public institutions, robust business and commercial activities and a hinterland of diverse agricultural pursuits, Yallahs has emerged as a prominent urban centre of eastern Jamaica and will undoubtedly benefit further from the proposed major road upgrading of the A4 into Port Antonio.

The Yallahs Division was one of the original 16 divisions allotted to the parish of St Thomas. It was also one of the eight consigned to the St Thomas Western constituency when the first Parochial Board Parish Council (PC) Election under adult suffrage was held in October 1947. Over the years, the quantity of the divisions has been largely reduced in both parish and constituency, and at one point the Yallahs Division was even split into two divisions, namely Yallahs East and Yallahs West.

Along with the town of Yallahs, the division includes communities and districts such as Poor Man’s Corner, Phillipsfield, Lloyds, Aeolus Valley, Scotland Gate, Bloomfield, Lows Mountain, Johncrow Hill, Lowden Hill, Gold Ridge, Seymour Garden, Pomfret, and Green Wall.

Traditionally the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has dominated the Yallahs Division to the tune of 49¾ years (70.7 per cent) over the 70½ years since October 1947, and with 10 (71.4 per cent) of the total of 14 councillors who have represented the division since that time.

In comparison, the People’s National Party (PNP) has had only four councillors (28.6 per cent) who served for just over 20½ years (29.3 per cent). Except for the 1960 PC Election under Robert Lightbourne’s tenure as Member of Parliament (MP), and the 2012 PC Election under MP James Robertson, the PNP’s rare quantum of victories in this division only occurred when the PNP was in power.

Under the first St Thomas Western Member of the House of Representatives (MHR), the JLP’s Jehoida A McPherson, the JLP consolidated the Yallahs Division in the first contest in 1947 with Reuben O Moore ,who polled only 337 votes (29.5 per cent) and outscored a slate of seven Independent contenders in a 48.1 per cent voter turnout. But by 1951 the division was reduced to just two contenders when the JLP’s AA Rondon defeated the PNP’s Marcus Loague by 38 votes in a 22.0 per cent voter turnout.

The PNP’s first national victory in 1955 also brought into the parish the first PNP MHR, Kenneth A Clarke (a cousin of Alexander Bustamante), as well as the division’s first PNP councillor, E A Stewart, who defeated Rondon by 172 votes in a 35.6 per cent voter turnout in the 1956 PC Election.

With the JLP’s Robert Charles Lightbourne as the seat’s third MHR in 1959, the Yallahs Division remained steadfast under the PNP’s Lawrence L Telfer, who polled 55.5 per cent of the ballots in the 1960 PC Election. But the next election in 1966 would see the genesis of the division’s longest-serving councillor, the JLP’s Henry Marvelley, who trounced Telfer by 365 votes (28.8 per cent); then Wilkin Robinson (twice), first in 1969 by 104 votes, and then in 1974 by 140 votes.

However, by then Lightbourne had abandoned the JLP after their 1972 defeat to become an independent member in the House, followed by the formation of his United Party (UP) in 1974 with the Star as its symbol. Before the end of that year, UP went down and the Star never became an illumination in the political constellation anywhere.

But in the 1974 PC Election, Lightbourne’s political acumen and influence in St Thomas Western was clearly accentuated when, under his direction, all six of his (former) JLP councillors (including Marvelley) ran as independents and all six defeated PNP candidates.

A change of the guard in Yallahs came in 1976 with the second PNP Member of Parliament, Selvin Dewar, along with a big swing to the party with Doreen Chin Sang (the division’s first female councillor), who destroyed the JLP’s Allan Bonaparte Ross by 1,284 votes (52.7 per cent). But alas, both Dewar and Chin Sang were destined to become one-termers.

By 1981, the Yallahs Division was split into Yallahs East and Yallahs West, and following the JLP tsunami of 1980 which brought in that party’s Errol Anderson as the next MP for St Thomas Western, the 1981 PC Election saw the return of Henry Marvelley as the JLP councillor for Yallahs East, defeating the PNP’s Relva Erskine by 830 votes (66.2 per cent), while the JLP’s Reginald Bogle took the Yallahs West Division when he defeated the PNP’s Leslie Evans by 794 votes (75.8 per cent).

Despite the PNP’s huge national victories in both the 1986 and 1990 PC Elections, Anderson held on to both Yallahs divisions in both elections. In 1986 he scored with Leonard Jones, who took Yallahs East by 226 votes over Relva Erskine, and with Bruce Dawkins, who defeated the PNP’s Hubert Donaldson by 268 votes in Yallahs West. The repeat JLP victories in 1990 saw Marjorie D Walters conquering the PNP’s Derrick Clarke by 481 votes in Yallahs East and Hamilton Dawkins, who captured Yallahs West by 360 votes, over the PNP’s Trevor Ming.

It is to the PNP’s eternal shame that under their watch they allowed a period of 8½ years to elapse before the calling of the next PC Election in September 1998, an election that is mandatory every three years. True, administrations of both major parties have exceeded the law from time to time, but none so barefaced and so deliberate; and, ironically, at a time when the JLP opposition perhaps was most vulnerable and at its lowest ebb. It was nothing short of an electoral disgrace and a blot on the party’s record which former party president, the Rt Excellent Norman Manley, would never have condoned.

Anyway, by 1998 Yallahs was once more restored to one division, and with the departure of Anderson in 1993 and the emergence of a new PNP MP, George Anthony Hylton (a native of Yallahs), the Yallahs Division was won for only the fourth time by a PNP councillor (and the present PNP candidate), Constantine D Bogle, who defeated Marjorie Walters by 115 votes.

But Bogle’s term only lasted until the next PC Election in December 2003 when he stood down and in his place the PNP’s Joel Scott was whipped by the division’s third woman, the JLP’s Maud C Turgott, who won by 545 votes. It was a PC Election which became the first to be won by the JLP while the PNP was in power, and was also clearly influenced by the victory of the new JLP MP James Robertson, who had crushed Hylton in the 2002 General Election.

Turgott increased her margin to 554 votes (28.9 per cent) in the 2007 PC Election, but did not seek re-election in 2012 after the PNP regained power.Constantine Bogle was able to return a second term to defeat the JLP’s Courtney Lewin by 321 votes (12.4 per cent) in a 32.4 per cent voter turnout.

In the last Local Government Election on November 28, 2016, Bogle was narrowly beaten by 125 votes (4.4 per cent) by the JLP’s Dean R Jones, who polled 1,451 votes (51.1 per cent) to Bogle’s 1,326 (46.7 per cent) in a 32.1 per cent voter-turnout. The official result showed that of the 31 boxes in the division, Jones won 23 (74.2 per cent) to Bogle’s seven boxes (22.6 per cent), and both candidates tied on 27 votes each in the final box.

Indeed, there is a stark similarity in the Yallahs poll as it relates to both the November 2016 Local Government Election and the February 2016 General Election, which revealed that in the latter, with the same 31 boxes contested, James Robertson had triumphed in 25 boxes (80.6 per cent), Marsha Francis (his PNP opponent) won in only four boxes (12.9 per cent) and both candidates tied in the last two boxes.

In spite of his close margin of 414 votes (2.2 per cent), Robertson had won the Yallahs Division by 522 votes (11.5 per cent) in the general election, then more than doubled his overall margin throughout the constituency to 844 votes (8.1 per cent) in the local government election.

So, based on the political tradition of the division, and with John Lee the new JLP kid on the block who is also a native of Yallahs, this contest is destined to be another steep climb for Bogle, Dr Phillips, and the PNP, which is so badly in need of an eventful by-election victory.

The voter turnout here will be crucial to both sides, although that is hardly a prevalent factor in local government elections. The average voter turnout in the Yallahs Division since 1990 has been 37.7 per cent, which could be considered moderate to high in comparison to other areas. Without the Yallahs Division, the JLP already leads in the popular vote with 10,710 to the PNP’s 9,794, which explains how important victory is to either side, since victory for the PNP would clinch the St Thomas Municipality six divisions to four, but with less popular votes as in the case of both St Catherine and Manchester.

The most votes ever polled in the Yallahs Division were 1,898 by Marjorie Walters (Yallahs East) in 1990, closely followed by Doreen Chin Sang’s 1,850 in 1977. Chin Sang also scored the highest margin of victory with 1,284 votes (52.7 per cent), but the highest percentage margin belongs to Reginald Bogle’s 87.9 per cent in the Yallahs West contest in 1981.

It is also significant to note that of the 14 councillors elected at Yallahs, three (21.4 per cent) have been women (Chin Sang, Walters, and Turgott), which slightly defies the tradition of inadequate female participation in our politics.

Anyway, since the Yallahs by-election is all about the judgement that was handed down by the chief justice in the case of the JLP councillor, Dean Jones, who was disqualified on the grounds of being a Government employee, which is a breach of the law, I am reminded of another notable precedence which occurred with the same kind of media hype and excitement — that of young PNP attorney-at-law John Archibald Junor, whose excursion into the Borobridge Division of Dr Neville Gallimore’s St Ann South-Western seat in the 1977 Parish Council Election was short-lived by the following year when he was unceremoniously booted out of the division for not being a registered voter in the parish.

In what was to be his first political venture, Junor did well too by beating JLP incumbent Stephen Mathison by nearly 500 votes, but his victory was to no avail, as he was unseated and like Yallahs, the division put to a by-election. Junor’s next adventure would be another disaster when he dared to oppose PNP stalwart-turned JLP candidate Allan Isaacs in St Andrew South-Eastern in 1980 and was clobbered by nearly 5,000 votes. Eventually in 1989 he settled in the PNP bastion of Manchester Central where he served as a four-term MP, largely bequeathed by the political legacy of former PNP champion, Winston Vassel Jones.

— Troy Caine is a political historian

trodencorp@gmail.com