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Montego Bay, St James — Mount Salem Division Councillor Kerry Thomas has issued a powerful warning to Montego Bay Mayor Richard Vernon, cautioning him in opposition to following by means of on threats to take away political banners from public areas throughout the parish.
Talking on the Folks’s Nationwide Get together’s (PNP) Montego Bay Central Divisional Convention on Sunday, Thomas urged the mayor to rethink the transfer, arguing that it might provoke pointless political tensions.
“If you happen to contact the PNP banners, I do know what’s going to occur. Even with none of us saying something, a PNP supporter will contact a JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] banner, and that may create an atmosphere we don’t need on this parish,” Thomas warned. “We are not looking for that sort of atmosphere right here.”
He emphasised the necessity for a good and democratic marketing campaign course of, echoing steerage from the Electoral Workplace of Jamaica (EOJ) that elections have to be free and honest, permitting all candidates the chance to marketing campaign inside the regulation.
Thomas’s remarks are available response to latest statements by Mayor Vernon, who introduced final week that each one political marketing campaign supplies ought to be faraway from public areas in St James. He instructed that if the directive was ignored, the municipal company would step in to take away the supplies and problem fines to these accountable.
Backing Thomas’s place, PNP Normal Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell referenced the City and Nation Planning (Management of Promoting) Laws, which, he stated, enable for political promoting throughout election durations with no need permission from native authorities. He argued that any try by the mayor to take away such supplies could be exterior the bounds of the regulation.
The controversy deepened after JLP councillor Arthur Lynch of the Montego Bay South East division publicly known as for the elimination of marketing campaign paraphernalia posted by PNP candidate Senator Janice Allen, asserting that Allen was not but an official candidate for the St James Central seat.
“You aren’t speculated to be placing up any political paraphernalia until you’re a candidate, and, as we stand proper now, you aren’t a candidate of St James Central,” Lynch declared at a latest JLP marketing campaign occasion.
Campbell, nevertheless, defended the longstanding custom of marketing campaign promoting, stating that political events have at all times been allowed to erect posters and banners within the lead-up to elections. He urged the Electoral Fee of Jamaica (ECJ), now chargeable for the features of the political ombudsman, to problem a transparent ruling to stop additional battle.
As political tensions simmer in St James, all eyes are actually on the ECJ to offer readability and assist preserve a peaceable and lawful election atmosphere.
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