ROSE HALL, St James — Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Thursday urged Labourites to conduct a clean local government election campaign based on facts and trumpeting the accomplishments of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government which, he insisted, are incomparable to previous administrations.

Holness, leader of the JLP, says he believes this will be enough to convince voters to give the party more time to achieve its goal of moving Jamaicans away from poverty and towards prosperity.

“You will not find the Jamaica Labour Party promoting, circulating, distributing false, degrading, nasty lies about people, programmes, policies or anything. We do not do that! And there are many members of the Jamaica Labour Party that I have to personally call out. We don’t need to do that. When they go low, we go high. We must communicate to the people the facts,” he said, adding that this is increasingly important in an era where social media is so widely used, sometimes to misinform.

Holness insisted that his Administration’s record is unparalleled.

“We can’t be shy about it. Our light cannot be under a bushel. All of you in here are candles for the Jamaica Labour Party. You represent the light of the Jamaica Labour Party and you must shine in every corner of Jamaica. There has never been a Government of Jamaica that has had so many achievements to go and face the people with. You are well-armed to go and face the people of Jamaica in any election,” he said to cheering Labourites inside Montego Bay Convention Centre.

The party had called all JLP constituency chairpersons, members of parliament, councillors, councillor/candidates and party officers to the western city for the long-awaited announcement of a vote that has been postponed three times since the last election in November 2016.

Nomination Day for this year’s poll is February 8.

The JLP’s campaign theme for the local polls is “Building for you and your community”.

On Thursday, Holness, in a longer-than-promised address as the nation awaited the election date, touched on the contentious issue of the delay, again citing the impact of the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Europe.

As Minister of Local Government and Community Development Desmond McKenzie did before him, the JLP leader spent a lot of time talking about the work the JLP has done in building “Jamaica 2.0”, with references including the Housing, Opportunity, Production and Employment (HOPE) programme, his New Social Housing Programme, and the history-making single-digit unemployment rate.

Acknowledging that he may receive pushback for saying it, Holness maintained that Jamaica is “technically in full employment”. He conceded, however, that more work needs to be done to get those who are not actively seeking jobs within the formal system to do so.

Turning his attention to pushback the party has received about poor road conditions, he gave Labourites advice on how to respond on the campaign trail. The key, Holness said, was to be respectful and discuss the issue within the context of what previous Administrations had failed to do.

“What the Government can do, in one year of budget, [is far more than] what has not been done for decades of neglect,” he said.

“But the frustration of the people is palpable, it’s real. When you get up and you don’t have water you don’t care about that context. You just want your water now. And so as councillors and councillor/caretakers and MPs… and people who represent, you have to appreciate the emotion of the problem first. So you have to agree, commiserate with them. But you would not have helped the situation if you didn’t bring them to the contextual understanding of the problem. Because if you allow them just to vote on emotion, they will vote in a random way. And that is always a threat to democracy, the randomisation of voting choice,” he added.

Holness also used the opportunity to remind his audience and the wider Jamaica that he is one of them, having grown up in Spanish Town, St Catherine.

“When the people of Jamaica see me, and hear me, and touch me, and feel me, they know I am real. I am from them. I am like them. I went through their struggles. I understand their struggles. I am true to them. I am your child, I am your son, I am your brother, I am your uncle, and now I could be your father. You are my family,” said Holness.

After his rousing address, he yielded the podium to McKenzie who announced the nomination and election dates.