DIRECTOR of Elections Glasspole Brown is confident that the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) will be ready for the looming nomination of candidates and the by-elections in two constituencies and two parish council divisions next month.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Wednesday used an unscheduled visit to the weekly post-Cabinet media briefing to announce that voters in Trelawny Southern and St Andrew North Western will go to the polls on November 22 with nomination set for next Wednesday, November 6,

“I encourage all eligible voters to exercise their constitutional right to vote and participate actively in the democratic process,” said Holness.

He was followed by Minister of Local Government Desmond McKenzie who announced that by-elections will be held in the vacant Aenon Town Division in Clarendon and the Morant Bay Division in St Thomas, also on November 22 with nominations being accepted also next Wednesday.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, Brown told the Jamaica Observer that the EOJ will be able to manage all four by-elections on one day.

“It won’t be a problem in getting ready to hold them. We are able to do it. We are fairly advanced in terms of the resources, we are now putting everything in place to execute the nomination and elections,” said Brown.

He said the EOJ is still determining the number of people it will need on the ground to conduct the four by-elections but that will be somewhere in the region of 1,000.

“We will be ready to execute those four elections in November and we have all confidence in our ability to do so,” added Brown.

The Trelawny Southern constituency has been vacant since just over one year ago when long-serving Member of Parliament (MP), the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Marisa Dalrymple Philibert, resigned after the Integrity Commission’s director of corruption prosecution ruled that she be charged in connection with allegations that she made a false statement in her statutory declarations filed over the period 2015 to 2017 and 2018-2020. That matter remains before the courts.

In the meantime, the resignation of Dr Nigel Clarke on Tuesday, after just over six years in the job, opened the vacancy in St Andrew North Western.

The two municipal seats became vacant following the death of People’s National Party (PNP) councillor for Morant Bay Rohan “Washy” Bryan last May, and the death of the JLP’s Marjorie McLeod-McFarlane who held the Aneon Town Division in September.

The Opposition PNP has already signalled that it will not contest any parliamentary election, so it is expected that Dalrymple Philibert — who the prime minister signalled on Wednesday will contest the Trelawny Southern seat — and Duane Smith — who Holness confirmed as the party’s standard-bearer for St Andrew North Western on Tuesday — will get relatively smooth rides into the House of Representatives.

Up to press time, there was no indication from the PNP if it will be nominating candidates to contest the municipal by-elections.

With Dalrymple Philibert still before the courts, Holness told the post-Cabinet media briefing that she will be contesting the seat based on the demand of residents in the constituency.

“It’s difficult to speak for Marisa as to why she resigned and then she is coming back and I am certain that she will give an explanation, but my own view is that she really respected the perspective of the public with whatever accusation was laid in the public domain and she thought [resigning] was the honourable thing to do,” said Holness.

“But I think that as she went through the constituency and the people kept demanding that she return, and she does have quite a popular support in the constituency. So it is really the will of the people and we will see the will of the people exercised in the by-election,” added Holness.

Responding to questions about why the year-long delay in calling a by-election in Trelawny Southern, Holness pointed out that under Jamaica’s system of governance, the prerogative of calling an election is given to the prime minister.

He argued that the latitude to call elections is given to the prime minister to allow that person to protect the Government that is formed.

“The prime minister exercises that authority to ensure that the Government that is formed can continue and so you want to be sure that whenever you call an election you are in a good position to win it and that’s just the reality,” declared Holness.

“That doesn’t speak to any disenfranchisement of the democratic process, it is the nature of our democracy, which is why our democracy is stable,” added Holness as he argued that people of Trelawny Southern were not deprived of any representational benefits for the year they did not have a sitting MP.