People’s National Party (PNP) spokesman on housing and sustainable living Senator Floyd Morris is accusing the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) of spreading “outright lies” in its list of achievements contained in booklet form and distributed across the country on Wednesday by an army of volunteers.

The JLP also delivered the document in digital form as it officially launched its bid for a third term in office. Speculation is now rife that the upcoming general election will be held around the first week of September.

On Thursday afternoon, while campaigning in St Mary Western where the PNP’s Omar Woodbine is seeking to wrestw the seat from JLP chairman and former Security Minister Robert Montague, Morris, in an interview with the Jamaica Observer, flagged three of the 256 “achievements” as being false.

He is specifically taking issue with passage of the Disabilities Act, the Senate committee examining legislation to better protect senior citizens, and asked whether the 70,000 houses that were promised by the Government have been delivered.

“It is very misleading by the Government to claim the Disabilities Act because it was passed by the PNP Administration in 2014 and I was the person, as president of the Senate, who affixed my signature to that piece of legislation,” said Morris.

“It is erroneous and disingenuous for the Government to claim it as their achievement,” he added.

Morris also said that the Senate committee on senior citizens “came out of a motion that I tabled [in the Senate] in 2021. We debated and got it approved in 2024 and, coming out of that, we established the committee because that was what the motion called for. That is another big erroneous claim by the Government”.

Regarding the number of housing solutions completed by the JLP since it returned to office in 2016, Morris said, “If you’re following the postulations of the prime minister, he has put out that his Government has reached the target of 70,000 houses, certainly within the last two weeks he has stated that, and he said that the NHT (National Housing Trus) has contributed 43,000 of those 70,000 houses. But in this document he is saying that it’s 34,000 houses that the NHT and other State agencies have built.”

According to Morris, “It is clear that the Government has been manipulating data and providing misinformation and disinformation to the public in order to sway members of the public and it is disingenuous and dishonest in terms of the claims being made by the Government.”

Morris pointed out that in law, if you’re found guilty on one of three charges, you’re compromised. “In this instance they are compromised on all three,” he said, adding that this also raised questions about the credibility of the rest of the document, as three misleading claims have been uncovered in just the areas for which he has responsibility.

Meanwhile, when asked by the Observer how the PNP’s campaign in the bell weather St Mary Western constituency was going, Morris said, “I know that we’re going to give the chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party a nice retirement package. He’s my friend, but we’re going to send him home with a nice retirement package”.

Opinion polls indicate that Montague is in a fight for his political life with him trailing Woodbine by double-digit points. Of significance is that the party that forms the Government has won St Mary Western at every general election since 1967.