Jamaicans go to the polls on Thursday in the third general election in the 15-nation Caribbean trade bloc within the space of a month. Polls show the two major parties in a statistical dead heat as the final hours slip away.
The governing Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) is fighting to ensure that it is not the first party since independence from Britain in 1962 to win just a single term. The major opposition party, the People’s National Party (PNP) of former Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller, which ran the country for four consecutive terms before losing to the JLP, is trying to cash in on the gloom over Jamaica’s economic woes, fallout from last year’s urban war between the police, the military and gunmen loyal to a drug don now extradited to the United States and the relative inexperience of new Prime Minister Andrew Holness, 39.
Holness became the head of government less than three months ago, following the shock resignation of Bruce Golding, who was pushed out with help from the United States over his alleged closeness to drug don Christopher “Dudus” Coke. Polls commissioned by his own party showed that he had become such a political liability that the JLP would have lost the elections had he remained at the helm.
The military, police and members of other essential services have already voted ahead of the general population to free them for duty on Election Day. Voter turnout is expected to be around 70 percent. Fewer than five seats separated the two parties in the 60-member, now-dissolved parliament.
A poll commissioned by The Gleaner, one of the hemisphere’s oldest newspapers, shows the two parties in a statistical dead heat, with the PNP just nosing ahead of the JLP. But in the seat-by-seat, district-by-district analysis, the JLP has a very slim lead. If it holds, it means that the party could retain power, if just barely.
About 1.6 of the country’s 2.4 million voters are eligible to cast ballots in what is normally a very partisan exercise on the idyllic tourist island made famous by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, Blue Mountain Coffee and world champion sprinter Usain Bolt.
The Gleaner poll also showed that 43 of the 60 seats were already decided even before votes have been cast, but whoever wins the majority of the remaining 17 will be declared the winner by late Thursday or early Friday.
The race comes a month after Guyana and St. Lucia made bloc history by calling elections on the very same day, Nov. 28. The governing PPP barely retained power in Guyana, while former Prime Minister Kenneth Anthony has returned to power in St. Lucia after five years on the opposition benches.
