KINGSTON, Jamaica— After winning just two of the four by-elections it contested last Friday, despite promising a clean sweep, chairman of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Robert Montague, has suggested the party ignored its workers and the poor and vulnerable.

“It’s not the results we wanted but it is what we got. There are basically three lessons to be taken from these elections,” Montague said on Sunday as he addressed the party’s 81st annual conference at the National Arena.

“We must pay more attention to the poor and vulnerable; the people’s agenda, the cost of living, roads, light, housing and water.”

“We must help persons to start their small businesses or expand, and we must grow our footprint in the digital economy; and we must take care of our party workers,” Montague stated.

“This party intends to do just that, we are paying more attention to our party workers, creating more opportunities for them. The party leader started with the scholarship in education programme where children of party workers can get a scholarship or a grant. But we intend to go further,” the JLP chairman added.

On a now viral voice note that was leaked, longstanding JLP councillor for the Rae Town division in Central Kingston, Rosalie Hamilton charged that elected Members of Parliament and high-ranking JLP officials were being disrespectful to the people who had elected them, including party workers.

This, she suggested, will damage the party’s chances at securing a third term in the next general election due by September next year.

In Friday’s by-elections, the JLP candidates won the two parliamentary seats in Trelawny Southern and St Andrew North West where former House Speaker, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert and Duane Smith prevailed. Smith, the son of former National Security Minister and MP Derrick Smith who served the constituency for 29 years, replaces former finance minister Dr Nigel Clarke who resigned from the seat in October to take up a job with the International Monetary Fund. Dalrymple-Philibert is returning to her old seat from which she resigned in September 2023 after a damning Integrity Commission report recommended that she be criminally prosecuted for failing for several years to declare a high-end motor vehicle in her statutory filings.

The Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) did not contest the by-elections for the parliamentary constituencies. However, the party won the parochial elections it contested in the Morant Bay division in St Thomas and the Aenon Town division in Clarendon Northern.