Despite conceding the September 3, 2025 General Election to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), senior members of the Mark Golding-led People’s National Party (PNP) have raised concerns about reports of voter suppression, among other issues.

Of the 63 seats contested in the general election, the JLP won 35 while the remaining 28 were secured by the PNP.

At a post-election press conference held at PNP headquarters on Old Hope Road in St Andrew on Thursday, General Secretary Dayton Campbell said that the activities of international and internal observers of the electoral process were confined to polling stations. As such, they did not see certain flaws and therefore failed to highlight them when providing reviews of the process.

“The Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE), the Organization of American States and others would not have been out in the field to see that $100,000 was offered to an indoor agent not to work. They would not have seen what took place in the field. They would have been at the polling stations. They would not have seen the night before that somebody was offered money to dip their hand in ink and therefore can’t show up at the polling station. They would not have seen where some persons were being separated into lines as to who they are going to vote for. That is totally inappropriate,” Campbell said.

Accusations of vote-buying have been levelled at the PNP by the JLP.

Campbell said the PNP has been very responsible as a party, pointing out that it could have created a stir over events that happened during the election, but opted not to do so.

“A story [was carried on radio] that the Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections said [initially] that 21 per cent of the persons at the polling stations at 5:00 pm were not allowed to vote. We could have easily created a stir with that to say those people would have voted for us and could have changed the outcome of the election. We didn’t. We waited for good information, additional information and we have seen where, over the last two days, the electoral commission has refuted what was carried as to what CAFFE had said. Now CAFFE is clarifying that that did not take place,” Campbell said, claiming that there is evidence to suggest that there were attempts to suppress votes.

He added that many people left polling stations without being able to vote due to lengthy delays in the process.

The PNP’s Anthony Hylton, who was re-elected Member of Parliament for St Andrew Western, said that the party’s way of assessing activities on the ground are different from what political monitoring groups use.

“We use a report which we believe is more broad-based and very relevant,” he said.

Meanwhile, Golding said no formal report has been made to any State organ as there is no agency mandated to deal with issues such as voter suppression.

“We are going into the field to do a survey so we can get more tangible information rather than the indirect reports we have been receiving through social media and the campaign structures we have. At that point we can decide where we go from there. There really isn’t any State agency mandated to address that issue, that is one of the challenges we have,” Golding said.

“That is something we have to consider carefully, as to the best way to deal with this. Some of these things may require strengthening of the electoral law itself — the Representation of the People Act — to take into account the kind of methods that are being employed in this era relative to when that law was last amended or reviewed. Other things may just require an internal response as to how we manage certain things going forward,” Golding said.