Burke CHAIRMAN OF THE People's National Party's (PNP) Region Three organisation, Paul Burke, says that there were no real surprises in terms of the results of the recent general election in the the Region's 15 Corporate Area constituencies.
In a release on the results, Mr. Burke said that in doing its preliminary assessment of the results from the region, PNP Region Three accepted that the PNP did not do as well as expected in the St. Andrew Northern belt in particular and that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) did much better than it had expected but, "there were no real surprises for the Region, as we always knew that Eastern St. Andrew and West Central St. Andrew were, in effect, marginal constituencies straight down the line, and that the Northern St. Andrew constituencies, although marginal, had a strong JLP advantage for the incumbent Members of Parliament."
The JLP picked up three seats from the PNP in the October 16 general election in the Corporate Area. Prior to that the PNP had the majority of the 15 seats with 10. The new situation is that the JLP has eight seats, while the PNP has seven.
The PNP Region Three did a preliminary assessment of the results at a special meeting on October 17 at the Medallion Hall Hotel, Kingston, and attributed the party's overall victory in the election, "to the goodwill for the party built up over decades of service and contribution to this country, the solid achievement of the previous PNP administration, in which real tangibles could be identified and measured, and the responsible and mature leadership provided by party president and Prime Minister, P. J. Patterson."
"We looked at the issue of crime, and in particular the level of violence which the PNP government and the society failed to contain, the perception of not championing justice issues, notwithstanding the many positive justice reform acts by the government, and the corruption smear, misrepresented and given credibility by some media individuals, as some of the major contributory factors for the poor showing in the Corporate Area, particularly in middle-income communities," PNP Region Three said.
"In addition, issues of employment, job creation, urban renewal and community infrastructure had varying negative impact on our traditional PNP voters, and will be among the main challenges for this future PNP government."
In terms of Northern St. Andrew, the release said that the PNP made a late but concerted effort to improve its standing.
"We had to emphasise confidence, motivation, and provide a degree of hype, based on our own assessments that we had failed to maintain an effective organisational structure, that we had lost the enumeration mobilisation of voters to the JLP, the relatively late election of our candidates, and national issues impacting on the peculiar social composition of those constituencies.
"Additionally, we had hoped that the floating and opportunistic votes, which are heavily influential in marginal constituencies, would have assisted the party in Northern St. Andrew. Unfortunately, there were confusion and uncertainty about the polls, and the publication of the new polls came too late to be internalised and to motivate potential voters towards the PNP. These categories, where largely voters went to work in the morning, left in the early afternoon to vote and go home, were confronted by afternoon rain showers, and were not sufficiently motivated to get wet or muddy their shoes to vote."
However, the Region commended the security forces, the Electoral Office of Jamaica and the media, in general.
"We believe that the media played a positive and informative role for both parties and the electoral system, and that the vast majority of their comments were objective and balanced. In the case of the security forces, we believed that, for the most part, they operated in a professional and non-partisan manner, although there were some glaring cases of unintelligent authoritarian behaviour. There will be a few reports on unprofessional and or partisan behaviour that will be provided to the respective heads of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF).
"Finally, neither the Regional Organisation nor myself has any excuses for our losses, except for looking at those areas and things that went wrong, within our government, party and our own selves as persons and politicians. After our Regional Executive Council Meeting on Sunday, October 27, we will release our full findings, as we strongly believe that accepting facts and exposing the reasons, including our organisational weaknesses and deficiencies to the public, will be a significant step in the correction of problems and strengthening the organisation."
