KINGSTON, Jamaica — Fourteen months after they were postponed in November 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout in the economy that was exacerbated by the widespread damage caused by heavy rains, the Local Government Elections are set to be postponed again.

When the House of Representatives meets on Tuesday, on the agenda, under public business, is a Bill entitled ‘The Representation of the People (Postponement of Elections to Municipal Corporations and City Municipalities) Act, 2022’.

The bill will be tabled and debated.

The last local polls were held on November 28, 2016, and saw the governing Jamaica Labour Party [JLP] registering a landslide win over the Opposition People’s National Party [PNP] to take charge of the majority of the municipal corporations.

While the PNP had commenced campaigning in the latter half of 2021 as it anticipated that Prime Minister Andrew Holness would announce the elections for February, Holness has been signalling over the last several months that they would be postponed again.

With the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant last November, Holness told the JLP’s annual conference that month, “For those who are anxiously awaiting it (Local Government Elections), I don’t believe it would be the right thing to do with a new variant strain on the horizon and all the pressures of COVID.”

“This is a miserable time. It is not the time for politics and elections. This is the time for the nation to remain focused,” he added. Holness also took a jab at the PNP, telling the conference that the Opposition would be defeated in the next municipal polls anyway.

“… It don’t make sense to call an election because nothing will change. We still going to win the parish council elections,” he stated.

The omicron variant is currently driving a relentless fourth wave of the coronavirus that has seen record daily infections with increasing hospitalisations though the death rate is lower than that seen during the third wave that was driven by the delta variant.

The prime minister mentioned a miserable time in November and things may be a bit more miserable for Jamaicans at the moment with rising prices and a surging murder rate. Political watchers have said the combination of those factors makes it a bad time to call an election.