VOTERS in Clarendon South Eastern could go to the polls before the end of this month in a by-election to replace Member of Parliament (MP) Rudyard “Ruddy” Spencer, who has been persuaded to quit.

The veteran member of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has indicated that he will be walking away from representational politics and is expected to submit his resignation before the end of this week.

JLP sources have disclosed that Spencer, a 76-year-old former trade union leader who first entered Parliament as an Opposition senator in 1993, is to be given a soft landing with a posting at the Jamaican Embassy in Berlin, Germany.

According to the sources, the deal for Spencer to resign was brokered by the party’s leader, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who has hand-picked Senator Pearnel Charles Jr to be the party’s next standard-bearer in the seat which the JLP has held for the past 18 years.

“As part of his strategy, Holness wants a by-election in the constituency which we don’t expect to lose before the general election. A defeat will be the third in five by-elections for the PNP (People’s National Party) since 2016. How demoralised will the Comrades be going into the general [election]?” said a senior JLP insider.

Just over 41,300 people will be eligible to vote in the by-election, based on the November 2019 voters’ list.

The agreement to get Spencer to resign and clear the way for Charles Jr also paves the way for parliamentary secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, Senator Robert Nesta Morgan to be named the next JLP representative for Clarendon North Central.

This should prevent what was shaping up to be a bitter battle by supporters of the two young senators over who is to replace the 84-year-old Pearnel Charles Sr as the party’s representative in Clarendon North Central.

 Last October, when the Jamaica Observer first reported the plan to settle the dispute over Clarendon North Central JLP by installing Charles Jr in Clarendon South Eastern, insiders had suggested that it was a deal brokered by the party’s General Secretary Dr Horace Chang.

But with everyone not signing off, Holness intervened and dangled the posting in Germany as a sweetener to ensure that there was no major dispute in the party with the general election looming. 

“It was clear Pearnel wanted his son to replace him but there are Labourities in the constituency saying, ‘No more Charles’. In addition, Nesta is a youth from the constituency with family members still living there, so he is accepted as one of their own.

“And it is not a bad move to replace Ruddy, who is a union man, with the son of one of the island’s greatest union leaders in south east. It is also a constituency which has produced two prime ministers, [Sir Alexander] Bustamante and [Hugh] Shearer, so it is a good seat for a young man going places,” a JLP insider told the Observer then.

Spencer defeated the PNP’s Patricia Duncan Sutherland by almost 1,000 votes in the 2016 General Election, while Charles Sr, who has held the Clarendon North Central seat since 2002, won in 2011 by 1,836 votes but saw his winning margin decline to 536 in the last general election.

Duncan Sutherland remains the PNP’s caretaker in Clarendon South Eastern and is expected to be the name on the ballot if the party decides to contest the by-election.