KINGSTON, Jamaica — Member of Parliament for St Catherine South, the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Fitz Jackson has warned of street protests and possible court action if the Government proceeds with naming Portmore Jamaica’s 15th parish.

Jackson, who is the PNP’s spokesperson on matters related to Portmore, gave the warning Tuesday during his contribution to the 2024/25 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives.

“The PNP’s position is very clear. The present construct of the Portmore City Municipality represents the expressed will of the people and must be respected. If they, through an adequate and transparent process of consultation, clearly indicate they wish to have some changes to what they created, so shall it be,” Jackson remarked.

“Anything less than that will be resisted by me and the People’s National Party in the streets and in the courts if necessary,” he added.

According to Jackson, what is being pursued by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government goes far beyond just Portmore. He charged that the actions of the government seek to turn back what the country has achieved over the past 44 years in “detribalizing” the electoral process.

“It is a regrettable and dangerous retrograde path that all well-thinking and decent persons must resist, with every fibre in our body!  It is about preserving our hard-earned democratic process in this country, and respect for the will and desire of the residents who are being treated with contempt. Evil prevails when good people fail to act. We will act,” Jackson declared.

He likened the actions of the JLP to a “sinister attempt to reintroducing that age-old and universally-abandoned practice of gerrymandering the parish boundaries of St Catherine.”

“This sinister and anti-democratic relic of gerrymandering would reverse the arrangements for a municipal structure lobbied and fought for by the residents and stakeholders of Portmore. A structure that emanated from years of widespread consultations across the length and breadth of Portmore,” said Jackson.

The veteran MP noted that the PNP did not create the Portmore municipality, rather he said the PNP merely facilitated the expressed desire and aspiration of the people of Portmore to have what their wisdom, and intellect prescribed.

“The PNP administration facilitated that realisation because we respect the will and intelligence of the people we serve and because we don’t see ourselves as their masters, but their servants”.

Jackson pointed out that the JLP has won control of the Spanish Town Municipality just once since 2003 because the political pendulum had swung in their favour.

“That was in 2007. It was the JLP administration led then by Prime Minister Bruce Golding who had flown the idea of making Portmore into a parish during the campaign leading up to the 2007 general elections. However, I gather that after assessment of a requested extensive study done by the EOJ (Electoral Office of Jamaica), the idea was abandoned for the rest of that term of office,” said Jackson.

He asserted that not having ever won a majority of seats in the Portmore Municipality, and only winning the mayorship there once, the current administration decided to use its parliamentary majority to unilaterally manipulate the boundaries of two of the Portmore parliamentary seats, and separating Portmore from the parish of St Catherine.

“In so doing they sought to unilaterally determine constituency boundaries by removing communities that traditionally voted for the PNP. They seek to go further, and separate Portmore from the rest of St Catherine. By removing the Portmore councillors from St Catherine they figured their chances of taking control of the St Catherine Municipality would be improved,” said Jackson.

He outlined that “This plot was clear to us and many others from the beginning and we said so. This was continuously denied by the government. Then alas, the then senior Cabinet Minister and member from South West St Catherine (Everald Warmington) in celebration of the sinister plot, affirmed publicly that the JLP will take control of the St Catherine Municipality and will not lose the East Central seat ever again, because they now will be getting the boundary changes they wanted.”

Jackson noted that Warmington’s public statement was never refuted by the prime minister.

He also said that for the avoidance of doubt, he sought to table questions in the House for the prime minister to answer but was blocked from doing so by the Speaker of the House.

Jackson reminded that subsequent to Warmington’s revelation, and presumed embarrassment to the government, the prime minister announced on January 17, 2024, at the ground-breaking ceremony for the Portmore Resilience Park, that the government would not proceed with the sinister plan before the upcoming Local Government Elections (held on February 26), and widespread consultation would precede any further steps.

“We applauded that decision and was happy that good sense had prevailed, at least for a while. But, to the residents’ surprise and without any notice, shortly after the recent Local Government Elections, the prime minister, in a vexed manner, announced in this House, that the government will make Portmore into a parish! It appears that the prime minister was fraught with deep disappointment from the massive defeat in the recent elections in Portmore, after investing so much effort in visits to various sections of Portmore leading up to the elections,” Jackson stated.

The Opposition spokesman said: “For my over 35 years of involvement in elections in Portmore, I have never seen so many visits leading up to any election, and more so a local government election: at least nine such visits within an approximate two-month period. Yet, the margin of victory of all the PNP seats won were the largest ever over the past 20 years, including that of the mayor, which is right across all the 12 divisions of all three parliamentary seats in Portmore, even without the areas being kept out of the current recommended boundaries by the EOJ, and was agreed on by both parties in 2011”.