FALMOUTH, Trelawny — Independent candidate Eric Wint, who will be vying for the Martha Brae Division in Trelawny Northern, is among four ex-cops nominated to contest the February 26 Local Government Elections. The others are Liston Wauchope, Charles “Sweat Suit” Wilson, and Roydell Hamilton.

Wauchope is running on a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) ticket in the Ulster Spring Division of Trelawny Southern. He served the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) for almost 20 years but resigned shortly before nomination day on Thursday. He will be going up against Andre Ennis of the People’s National Party (PNP).

Meanwhile, Wilson — who left the force a decade ago — will be going up against the incumbent, Dunstan Harper (JLP), in Sherwood Content Division.

Hamilton, who served the JCF for almost 30 years before his recent resignation, will contest the Martha Brae Division where he will face off against the JLP’s Dave Lawkin and Wint. The PNP’s Phillip Service has held the seat since 2012 when he beat Lawkin by more than 400 votes.

Wint originally had aspirations to run on a JLP ticket in Martha Brae but decided to go it alone after the party gave Lawkin the nod. The spurned ex-cop blames Member of Parliament Tova Hamilton for the JLP’s failure to select him as its candidate.

“The Member of Parliament, after carrying me here for two and a half years doing all of the groundwork, and then she use somebody else, one to two month before the elections, to put in there. That’s friendship. Is personal friendship that! You can’t have somebody work for two and a half years, and a month or two before the election you carry in somebody else. And then you tell me after the election you [will] find somewhere put me; that’s not right,” Wint, who is a retired deputy superintendent of police and an elder in the Greenwich Town Seventh-day Adventist Church, told the
Jamaica Observer.

Despite appearing at the nomination centre with just a handful of supporters on Thursday, he was still brimming with confidence that he will triumph come Monday, February 26.

“I have more than a realistic chance. I am on the ground for two and a half years. The person who she put in, he lost by 483 votes in 2012 and he has not been back on the ground until she put him in a month or two ago,” Wint declared.

“The ground is well fertile. We are good, the people send us here representing them. So that’s why we are here. We don’t have to come with truckload and busload. We have done our groundwork and we will be victorious when the day comes,” he added.

Dennis Meadows, the PNP standard-bearer in the Trelawny Northern constituency, has welcomed Wint’s decision to run as an independent as he believes it will split the JLP vote and make victory easier for Hamilton.

But Wint was adamant that he has done enough over the last two and a half years to beat both Lawkin and Hamilton.

“If it even split, I will still be the victor in the split and I know I can manage both the PNP and the JLP. I know I have that leverage to overcome both of them because I have been with the people over the past two and a half years,” he insisted.

Up to the time when the elections were called, the JLP had the majority in the Trelawny Municipal Corporation with six divisions to the PNP’s three.