KINGSTON, (Reuters) – Jamaica’s ruling party conceded defeat in national elections last night, as preliminary official results showed the party of opposition leader and former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller scoring a landslide victory.
“The people have spoken,” said Karl Samuda, campaign director of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party. “We have not won,” Samuda conceded in his comments to national television.
“We have done what we could on behalf of the people of Jamaica,” Samuda added. “There will be another day.”
On the eve of the voting, polls showed Jamaica’s two long dominant parties, running neck-and-neck in parliamentary elections focused on the island’s stagnant and debt-ridden economy.
Police and soldiers stood guard at polling stations across the country throughout the day. Jamaica has a history of election violence but the run-up to the vote was one of its most peaceful in years.
Holness, a 39-year-old former education minister, was hoping to keep the center-right JLP in power for a second consecutive term.
The country’s youngest-ever prime minister, he took office in October after the governing party suffered a blow when his predecessor surprisingly resigned.
The PNP is led by Portia Simpson Miller, a former prime minister who became Jamaica’s first female leader in 2006 and has vowed to make Holness one of the shortest-serving premiers in the island nation’s history.
The winner of the election will face the stiff challenge of re-invigorating the economy in one of the world’s most indebted countries.
Initial reports from election monitors said less than half of Jamaica’s 1.6 million eligible voters had cast ballots in the race, which was held against a grim economic backdrop.
Although one of the Caribbean’s more developed economies, Jamaica is saddled with a public debt load now totaling more than 120 percent of its gross domestic product.
BURDENSOME DEBT
The country’s burdensome debt has proved a drag on the economy, which is dependent on tourism and has failed to grow in the past four years, sputtering since the JLP took power.
Unemployment has risen from 9.8 percent in 2007 to 12.9 percent.
Devon Jameson, a 31-year-old accountant, said the struggling economy led him to vote for the opposition.
“The JLP has wrecked this country with its poor economic policies,” he said. “Our national debt is growing, unemployment is rising and poverty is getting worse.”
Analysts say the new government likely will be forced to implement unpopular austerity measures, including possible layoffs of state workers, in an effort to shore up the economy after it received a $1.27 billion lifeline from the International Monetary Fund last year.
Holness pledged on the campaign trail to spur the economy by attracting private investment to infrastructure projects. He also said the ruling party had successfully reduced crime in the reggae-crazed country, long plagued by criminal gangs, or so-called posses.
Simpson Miller vowed if elected to appeal to the IMF to extend the period Jamaica has to repay any loans to give authorities more leeway to jump-start the economy.
She voiced confidence her party would triumph as she voted at a school in the capital of Kingston. “I feel a wind of change blowing across Jamaica,” Simpson Miller told reporters.
The election comes a year earlier than originally scheduled. Worried about the global economic outlook and its implications for Jamaica, Holness called the vote in early December only weeks after being sworn in as prime minister.
Holness was chosen by JLP lawmakers after former Prime Minister Bruce Golding resigned over fallout from his handling of a U.S. request for the extradition of a notorious Jamaican gang leader.
After initially fighting Christopher “Dudus” Coke’s extradition to New York on drug-trafficking charges, Golding’s administration bowed to U.S. pressure in May 2010 and sent police and the military into Kingston’s slums to take him into custody.
Seventy-six people died in ensuing gun battles between government forces and supporters of Coke, once a strong JLP supporter who wielded powerful influence in the slums.
If Holness and the JLP lose the election, it would mark the first time Jamaicans voted out an incumbent government after only one term.
A defeat also would make Holness one of the shortest-serving prime ministers in Jamaican history. That record would still be held by Donald Sangster, who took office in February 1967 but died of illness less than two months later.
Declared constituencies in the Jamaica elections
(Jamaica Observer) All Island Preliminary Results. 6586 of 6629 boxes counted. The PNP now has 36 declared constituencies to the JLP’s 21.
CLARENDON CENTRAL: LESTER MICHAEL HENRY – JLP (7111) RICHARD WATSON – PNP (4133)
CLARENDON NORTH CENTRAL: PEARNEL P. CHARLES – JLP (6595) COLLINGTON R. CAMPBELL – PNP (4801)
CLARENDON NORTH WESTERN: RICHARD EDWARD AZAN – PNP (8161) MICHAEL STERN – JLP (6613)
CLARENDON NORTHERN: HORACE WASHINGTON DALLEY – PNP (7645) LAURENCE GEORGE BRODERICK – JLP (5963) ETON CEDRIC WILLIAMS – NDM (20)
CLARENDON SOUTH EASTERN: RUDYARD CONRAD SPENCER – JLP (8770) DERECK LLOYD LAMBERT – PNP (8684)
CLARENDON SOUTH WESTERN: NOEL GEORGE ARSCOTT – PNP (7702) JOEL LAWRENCE WILLIAMS – JLP (5529)
HANOVER EASTERN: DONALD K. (D.K) DUNCAN – PNP (6603) PAULA KERR-JARRETT – JLP (6221)
HANOVER WESTERN: IAN DAVE HAYLES – PNP (8569) DONOVAN E. A. HAMILTON – JLP (6909)
KINGSTON CENTRAL: RONALD GEORGE THWAITES – PNP (5818) ROSALIE M. HAMILTON – JLP (3795) MICHAEL A. LORNE – MGPPP (58)
KINGSTON EAST AND PORT ROYAL: PHILLIP FEANNY PAULWELL – PNP (8051) PETER CURTIS A. SANGSTER – JLP (1529)
KINGSTON WESTERN: DESMOND ANTHONY A. MCKENZIE – JLP (8942) EARL A. DAWKINS – PNP (1825) ARLINGTON ANTHONY SEATON – MGPPP (32)
MANCHESTER CENTRAL: PETER MURCOTT BUNTING – PNP (10481) DANVILLE A. L. WALKER – JLP (10042)
MANCHESTER NORTH EASTERN: AUDLEY FITZALBERT SHAW – JLP (8326) VALENTON ORLANDO WINT – PNP (7832)
MANCHESTER NORTH WESTERN: MICKAEL A. PHILLIPS – PNP (8462) TIMOTHY AUGUSTINE SCARLETT – JLP (6308)
MANCHESTER SOUTHERN: MICHAEL PEART – PNP (9547) COLLIN A. VIRGO – JLP (7040)
PORTLAND EASTERN: LYNVALE GEORGE BLOOMFIELD – PNP (9127) PATRICK MONTCLAIR LEE – JLP (8164)
PORTLAND WESTERN: DARYL W. VAZ – JLP (7350) ROHAN GEORGE QUEST – PNP (6579) PETER ANTHONY FLEMMINGS – NDM (18)
ST. ANDREW EAST CENTRAL: PETER D. PHILLIPS – PNP (6867) BEVERLEY ANN MARIE PRINCE – JLP (4032) ALLAN LLOYD MARTIN – MGPPP (42)
ST. ANDREW SOUTH EASTERN: JULIAN JAY ROBINSON – PNP (6007) DWIGHT AUGUSTUS NELSON – JLP (4233) HORACE HUGO MATTHEWS – MGPPP (29) BYRON S. M. PATTON – IND (11)
ST. ANDREW EASTERN: ANDRE HYLTON – PNP (6566) SAPHIRE I. LONGMORE – JLP (6332) EARLE PATRICK DELISSER – NDM (46)
ST. ANDREW NORTH EASTERN: DELROY HAWMIN CHUCK – JLP (5390) JOHN-PAUL ALEXANDER WHITE – PNP (3509) TERENCE ARTHUR J. LINDO – NDM (47)
ST. ANDREW NORTH WESTERN: DERRICK CHARLES SMITH – JLP (6721) GRANVILLE SEYMOUR VALENTINE – PNP (5089) CURTIS C CAMPBELL – NDM (51)
ST. ANDREW SOUTH WESTERN: PORTIA SIMPSON – PNP (10920) VICTOR ANTHONY HYDE – JLP (560) ANNMARIE EVADNE THOMAS – IND (25)
ST. ANDREW SOUTHERN: OMAR LLOYD DAVIES – PNP (9667) DENNIS ANTHONY MESSIAS – JLP (858)
ST. ANDREW WEST CENTRAL: ANDREW MICHAEL HOLNESS – JLP (7844) PATRICK LEROY ROBERTS – PNP (6723)
ST. ANDREW WEST RURAL: PAUL LENNOX BUCHANAN – PNP (7605) ANDREW GALLIMORE – JLP (7433) JOAN PRINCESS REV. DR. PORTEOUS – NDM (51)
ST. ANDREW WESTERN: GEORGE ANTHONY HYLTON – PNP (9367) GEORGE DUHANEY – JLP (4220) ALDITH MARY GRANT-LEE – NDM (40)
ST. ANN NORTH EASTERN: SHAHINE ELIZABETH ROBINSON – JLP (9532) PAUL T. A. STEWART – PNP (8437)
ST. ANN NORTH WESTERN: DAYTON RICARDO CAMPBELL – PNP (8753) OTHNEIL DAMION LAWRENCE – JLP (7785)
ST. ANN SOUTH EASTERN: LISA RENE HANNA – PNP (8909) ONEIL LORENZO ESTEEN – JLP (4703)