The Government used its superior numbers in the Upper House on Friday to pass the Counties and Parishes (Amendment) Bill 2025 to make Portmore Jamaica’s 15th parish amid strenuous objections from Opposition senators and warnings that the legislation would “immediately be unconstitutional”.

The Opposition also reiterated its position that the Bill
will be challenged and possibly repealed under a future People’s National Party (PNP) Government.

The Bill, which was passed in the House of Representatives on February 11, was piloted on Friday by Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith.

In the debate ahead of the vote, Opposition Senator Peter Bunting quoted from a letter from the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) Earl Jarrett, which was written on June 18, 2024 to the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development. The letter outlined that the proposed Portmore parish boundaries may negatively affect the boundaries of a constituency as stated in the Second Schedule of the constitution, Paragraph 2, Subsection 1 which states that “the boundary of a constituency shall not cross the boundary of a parish as delimited by the Counties and Parishes Act, or by any law amending or replacing that law”.

Bunting shared that on February 12, 2025, the day after the Bill was passed in the House, the ECJ chairman again wrote to the clerk to the Houses of Parliament stating: “The Electoral Commission of Jamaica is aware that the Counties and Parishes Amendment Bill was passed in the House of Parliament on Tuesday, February 11, 2025.”

Bunting said the chairman drew the clerk’s attention to the June 2024 letter, a copy of which was attached to the February 2025 letter, pointing out the “probable breach that would occur should the Bill be passed and brought into effect”.

According to Bunting, the letter highlighted that the proposed boundary for the parish of Portmore would impact four constituencies, 13 electoral divisions, and 398 polling divisions (PDs) in St Catherine.

The letter was also copied to the director of elections. It said sections of the Gregory Park and Portmore Pines divisions would be eliminated and all of PDs 51, 53, 55, and 56 would no longer exist. PDs 1, 20, 49, 50, 52, and 54 would be splintered.

A former commissioner of the ECJ, Bunting said: “You’re not just shattering constituency boundaries or local government division boundaries, but right down to the PD level, 398 PDs.” He said it was of such moment that the chairman of the PNP, Dr Angela Brown-Burke, on February 21 wrote to Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie, who had piloted the Bill in the House, reminding him of the constitutional provision.

“It will immediately be unconstitutional,” Brown-Burke wrote, while urging that the Bill not be enacted even if it was approved by the Senate.

In a scathing takedown of the Bill, Bunting stated that he rose to speak in “absolute and unrelenting opposition to this Bill; this brazen, undemocratic, and dangerous piece of legislation that seeks to undermine Jamaica’s hard earned democratic traditions”.

“This Bill is not about progress, this Bill is not about governance. This Bill is not about the betterment of Portmore. This Bill is a cynical, political manoeuvre designed to subvert democracy and manipulate the electoral boundaries for partisan gain,” Bunting continued.

“This Bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, dressed up in the language of development but fundamentally rotten at its core,” he charged.

“At its heart it represents a blatant attempt by this Jamaica Labour Party Government to gerrymander Jamaica’s electoral map, bypassing the Electoral Commission of Jamaica — an institution that has, for decades, been entrusted with the independent and non-partisan responsibility for setting constituency boundaries,” he added.

Bunting said that for more than 40 years Jamaica has been a beacon in the Caribbean and beyond for its progressive approach to electoral governance, standing as a bulwark against political manipulation, ensuring that no Government, “no matter how powerful or power-hungry, can unilaterally shift constituency boundaries to its advantage”.

“This JLP Government, in a shameless bid to tilt the scales in its favour, seeks to override this long-standing system by adjusting constituency boundaries under the guise of establishing a new parish,” he said. “This is a naked abuse of power, a perversion of the parliamentary process, and an outright betrayal of the Jamaican people.”

Bunting asserted that, “If the people of Portmore were given the choice they would resoundingly reject this Bill for the farce that it is.”

He also questioned what the Bill brings to the people of Portmore that they could not get without it.

The Bill, he said, leaves the people of Portmore in a state of political and administrative limbo.

“It severs them from the resources of St Catherine without offering them anything in return. It would be a parish in name only, a hallow designation that serves only the political ambitions of the Jamaica Labour Party,” said Bunting.

Johnson Smith, however, pushed back at Bunting’s arguments that the Bill was unconstitutional but seemed to concede that it cannot immediately become operational.

“We’re quite clear that the authority of this Parliament is to make the law which declares the parish. The Act comes into effect on an appointed day; there are matters that must take place after the parish is declared and that will include constituency boundaries, but they’re not part of this declaration process,” said Johnson Smith.

“They’re a separate process; they’re part of a subsidiary process, they are a part of a reference in a schedule to the constitution and not a part of the constitutional power, the law-making power which this Parliament has,” she explained.

“So the Parliament will declare the parish and then the boundaries will be sorted using the normal mechanisms of the ECJ thereafter,” she added.

“This is not rocket science; it is a process. And you may have a view about the order in which things will be done, but there are other views which say that unless the parish itself is declared and the boundaries are recognised then you cannot take the other actions that would be necessary,” she said..

She told Bunting that the position he took was unfortunate and expressed the hope that he would reflect and come around to another position.

Johnson Smith also suggested that when Jamaicans look at the positives for making Portmore a parish, it would be difficult for them to see the negatives being pushed by the PNP.

Bunting noted earlier that it would take at least a year for the ECJ to sort out the issues relating to boundaries, electoral divisions and polling divisions.