MONTEGO BAY, St James – The two major political parties are brimming with confidence of gaining control of the majority of parliamentary seats across western Jamaica in today’s general election.

In the February 25, 2016 General Election, the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and People’s National Party (PNP), each secured six of the 12 seats up for grabs across the western parishes of Trelawny, Hanover, St James and Westmoreland.

Thirty candidates have been nominated to contest those constituencies in the country’s 18th general election since universal adult suffrage in 1944.

A confident JLP deputy leader in charge of the party’s Area Council Four, JC Hutchinson, told the Jamaica Observer West yesterday that his party is confident of picking up an additional four seats when the votes are tallied in today’s polls.

“We are well prepared, our campaign has gone well, so we are looking at winning at least 10 of the 12 seats,” said the veteran politician, who is also the Member of Parliament for St Elizabeth North West.

“With the amount of work that we have done in the west, we will bring home the Labour Party comfortably, and we are very confident that we will make a clean sweep in Trelawny, a clean sweep in St James and as well in Hanover.”

In Trelawny, Hutchinson believes that his party can win the battleground seat of Trelawny Northern which has been in the PNP’s winning column since 1989, and hold onto the Trelawny Southern constituency where the incumbent Marisa Dalrymple Philibert (JLP) is vying for her fourth term.

Attorney Tova Hamilton (JLP) will face incumbent Victor Wright (PNP) and independent Genieve Dawkins for the Trelawny Northern seat.

“Based on her [Hamilton] organisational work and the response from voters in the constituency, I am confident that Hamilton will take home that seat,” said Hutchinson, adding that a number of PNP supporters in the area have switched allegiance to the JLP.

But Wright, who defeated the JLP’s Dennis Meadows by a margin of 468 votes in the 2016 parliamentary polls, believes that he will retain the seat for his party.

“We are very confident of victory, we have done the work, I have worked for the people and there is a lot more to be done…,” he told scores of cheering supporters outside the Falmouth Town Hall shortly after he was nominated to contest the seat on August on 18.

Hutchinson is also predicting that the JLP candidate for St James Southern Homer Davis, who is also the mayor of Montego Bay, will end the PNP’s 31-year dominance of the constituency by beating the Opposition party’s Dr Walton Small.

In the last general election, the PNP’s Derrick Kellier who won the seat seven consecutive times, held onto it by a mere 62 votes in a magisterial recount.

The 73-year-old has since retired for representational politics, citing ill health.

Hutchinson argued that based on the work that Davis, who is also councillor for the Cambridge Division in the constituency, has done in the area, he should triumph over Dr Small.

“Davis has conducted an excellent campaign and will win,” said the JLP Area Council Four leader.

He is also confident that newcomer Tamika Davis (JLP) will defeat the PNP’s Ian Hayles in Hanover Western, while George Wright (JLP), the councillor for the Petersfield Division in Westmoreland, will turn the tables on the PNP’s Dwayne Vaz.

The JLP is buoyed by the fact that in the 2016 local government elections the party won four of the five municipal divisions in the Westmoreland Western constituency.

But Vaz has expressed confidence that he will retain the seat that he won for the PNP when he defeated Wright by a margin of 1,179 votes in the last general election.

That seat is also being contested by independent candidates Don Foote and businessman Torraino Beckford.

“The response to my campaign has been very good and so we are very confident of winning,” Vaz told the Observer West, as he defended his stewardship of the constituency.

Vaz was first elected as Member of Parliament in a by-election in 2014, after the death of Member of Parliament Roger Clarke.

He cited a raft of projects that he claims he has undertaken in the constituency over the past six years.

These include the construction of four houses for needy residents in Cold Spring, Llandilo Phase 6, Williamsfield and Hartford; education grants to hundreds of students at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels; construction of a library at the Savanna-la-Mar Infant School; zinc fence removal project in sections of Savanna-la-Mar, and a slew of roads rehabilitation projects.

Hayles, too, has also defended his stewardship of the Hanover Western constituency and vowed to increase his margin of victory over his JLP opponent.

The PNP incumbent, who defeated the JLP’s Brian Wallace by a margin of 1,471 in 2016 in securing his third term, argued that it was as a result of his astute leadership of the constituency why the parish of Hanover has “not been so badly affected by the coronavirus”.

“At the onset of COVID-19 I was the first to be out there providing leadership. I provided over 10,000 face masks, I established a sanitisation station for motor vehicles in the parish and supported several other projects, in an effort to prevent spread of the disease,” he said.

The constituency of St James West Central where JLP incumbent Marlene Malahoo Forte is being challenged by the PNP’s Andre Haughton, could end up in a nail-biting finish as well as the Hanover Eastern seat, that is being contested by the JLP incumbent Dave Brown and the PNP’s Wavel Hinds.

Meanwhile, there have been no reports of violence associated with political campaigning across the western parishes.

The Observer West observed that in many communities throughout the region, billboards erected by the two major political parties existed beside each other.

“The campaign appeared to be very peaceful and incident-free. Maybe the people have become more civilised or they have little or no interest in politics,” said a senior police officer from the region.

Meanwhile, commander for the Area One Police Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Clifford Chambers said the Jamaica Constabulary Force is in a state of readiness for today’s polls.

“The force is as prepared as can be. In terms of our preparation, we have been planning for this event for months now. We have clearly identified all the polling stations, the clusters, we understand clearly the constituencies. We have had several meetings with persons who will be vying for office, we have had several meetings with members of the EOJ [Electoral Office of Jamaica], we have fully apprised ourselves of the Disaster Risk Management Act, the protocol; we understand the high risk area and we have planned an operation order that treats specifically with some of the areas that we were advised pose some security challenge,” ACP Chambers explained.