WESTMORELAND, Jamaica— With just 14 of the 36 boxes counted so far,  attorney-at-law Senator Charles Sinclair is expressing confidence that his client councillor-elect Dawnette Foster of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), will prevail over People’s National Party (PNP) candidate Abigail Malcolm in the  magisterial recount for the Cornwall Mountain Division in Westmoreland.

The recount started on Wednesday morning in the Westmoreland Parish Court, where the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) and Senior Parish Court Judge Steve Walters are handling the process.

“Tomorrow is the swearing in for the candidates and we are hoping that Dawnette Foster will be one of the candidates that will be sworn in,” Sinclair told Observer Online.

“We have gone through 14 boxes of a possibly 35 boxes that we have to go through and I think the process is going smoothly.”

“There were several ballots that were in the rejected envelope that are coming back in, for the main part it is equal,” he declared.

However, he said based on that it has been revealed that: “Our preliminary count and our final count and the information and instruction that I have received it is panning out; it is coming back to where we were basically at the preliminary count which had Dawnette Foster at the end of the day ahead of the PNP candidate,” Sinclair disclosed.

“We started a little bit beyond the 10 o’clock hour. There are some things that I wanted to have checked before we commence; which is the application to see if it was in compliance with ROPA (The Representative of the People Act),” he added.

As for Candidate Abigail Malcolm she came out in bright yellow with her signature ponytail. The Observer Online observed her talking to attorney Maurice McCurdy and attorney Clayton Morgan, who are representing her.

Morgan told Observer Online that they are hoping to finish the boxes at the 6:00pm cut off time.

“We resumed at 2:10pm and we expect to finish the boxes by 6:00pm. We cannot say what the final results will be at this time,” Morgan said.

Meanwhile, he revealed that the legal team representing Malcolm intends on making some legal submissions.

“We intend to make some legal submission to the court in respect of a certain box. I don’t want to go into detail as to what that submission will be,” Morgan told Observer Online.

Morgan has also indicated that Malcolm’s legal team made the application for the magisterial recount after she lost by 27 votes, when the counting ended on Friday of last week.

Foster is said to have polled 1,497 votes to Malcolm’s 1,470.

—Kimberley Peddie