Counting Underway in Four By-Elections

Polls have closed in a quartet of by-elections across the country.

Voters went to the polls to fill parliamentary vacancies in North West St. Andrew and South Trelawny.

The vacancies in the Aenon Town division in North Clarendon and Morant Bay in East St. Thomas were also on Friday’s slate of by-elections.

Both parties are expressing confidence in their chances.

Mahiri Stewart reports.

With the People’s National Party, PNP, boycotting the parliamentary by-elections in North West St. Andrew and South Trelawny, the political battle lines are drawn in Aenon Town in Clarendon and Morant Bay in St. Thomas.

An array of bigwigs, workers, and supporters from both major political parties fanned out across the municipal divisions as voters trickled in to cast their ballots.

At 2 Friday afternoon, voter turnout in Aenon Town was 40 per cent, while Morant Bay reported turnout of just over 28 per cent.

The Jamaica Labour Party’s, JLP, Suzette Barton says Labourites will be celebrating when the votes are counted in Aenon Town Friday night.

But her challenger Delroy Dawson says he’s confident the work he’s done will return a victory for the PNP.

The PNP is seeking to wrest the division from the JLP. The Labourites won in the February local government elections by 92 votes.

A PNP victory would result in a tie in the Clarendon Municipal Corporation.

In the east, the PNP’s Rosemarie Shaw accused Labourites of going on a rampage aimed at intimidating her supporters.

The JLP’s Daryl Vaz, who was deployed in East St. Thomas to organise in the Dumfries area, says the party’s machinery was making a final push in the hour leading up to the close of polls.

The Labourites will have to overturn a margin of more than 4-hundred votes to claim victory.