General secretary of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) Dr Dayton Campbell says polls commissioned by the political organisation are showing it ahead of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in all but two municipal corporations, as both parties have started campaigning for the upcoming the local government elections.

“We continue to make our preparations. We have been doing audits to ensure that our organisation within the divisions is fine-tuned. We have been doing our polling, and at this time the People’s National Party is polling ahead in 12 of the 14 municipal corporations,” Campbell said during a press press conference on Monday afternoon.

He also urged the Government to call the election and not postpone it for a fourth time.

“We are asking the Government to ensure that they do not trample on the democratic process that we have fought hard for as a country and for them to announce the local government election,” he said.

“We have heard from sources that there is a plan to postpone the election until after the budget debate with a view to continue this tour of making wild promises to the people of Jamaica. I can very well recall in the lead up to the 2020 [general] election that they spent millions of dollars to have a ground breaking for the Charisma (hotel) project in Llandovery in St Ann. And up to this day, we have had no work taking place in Llandovery to build those hotel rooms,” he said.

On Sunday, after the JLP Central Executive Committee meeting in St Andrew, Chairman Robert Montague said the party is in “full election mode” and that his team has no equal going into the upcoming local government polls.

But Campbell questioned how the ruling party is so confident of winning the election and yet continues to postpone the date.

“As persons are aware, we would have had the last local government election in 2016 on November 28, and we were due to have the local government election by November 28, 2017 with a three months window during which it could be called. We’ve had three postponements of said election,” Campbell pointed out.

He said out that four polls last year showed the PNP leading.

“The four polls that we saw in the country last year: we saw one in February that the PNP had a very small lead, we saw one in June/July that the PNP had five point lead, we saw another one in September with a 3.4 per cent lead and another one in December with the PNP having a three-point lead,” Campbell said.

He also accused the JLP as using public relations (PR) tactics to hoodwink the populace.

“The issue of crime, despite what they say, the reality is that people are concerned about this. Even if you look at employment in every single poll that is done in the country, unemployment still comes up, clearly a disconnect between the statistics and the reality on the ground for the people. And the focus on on highways, everybody is still complaining about the road that leads to their house in their community. The garbage pile up… and all sort of things growing on it so you can tell how long it has been there,” Campbell said.

“This Government has failed miserably and you cannot continue to use PR only to govern because PR cannot convince a hungry man that he is not hungry when the food prices are increasing,” he said.

The press conference was called by PNP President Mark Golding to provide a briefing from a meeting of its new shadow cabinet and to articulate the party’s policies and vision. Along with Golding, Fitz Jackson, Peter Bunting and Julian Robinson addressed the press conference.