BlytheWESTMORELAND:
THE CONSTITUENCY of Westmoreland Central which has a total of 28,295 voters recorded only a little over a 50 per cent turn out on election day, as only 16,042 persons voted.
Some electors are attributing this mainly to the early morning rains which lasted until 11:00 a.m. on election day, while others attributed it to other factors, including poor organisation and disenchantment among voters. On Wednesday night, 12 of the 165 boxes which turned up at the counting centre Savanna-la-Mar Courthouse had no information on the outside. These were not accounted for in Wednesday night's preliminary count conducted with a strong military presence.
On Thursday, Violet Tennant, Central Westmoreland's Returning Officer and her team of workers set to work to carry out the final count. They started to count boxes with information on the outside. Then later in the afternoon they turned their attentions to the 12 boxes without any information on the outside. They used duplicate keys to gain entry in these boxes.
Mrs. Tennant and her team worked tirelessly through the night until 2:00 a.m. on Friday.
The final count, she said, now reads Dr. Karl Blythe of the PNP with 9,381 and Trevor Brooks of the JLP 6,661. Mrs. Tennant told The Gleaner that everything went smoothly on Election Day as there were no violence.
