Holness says focus on economy and crime, not elections
PRIME MINISTER Andrew Holness on Thursday said that no elections will be held until the Government is able to stimulate the economy and bring stability to the nation’s crime problem.
He was speaking during a tour of sections of the crimeplagued Westmoreland, one of seven police divisions across the island placed under states of emergency this week.
The local government polls, which have already been postponed due to the COVID19 pandemic, are due by the end of February 2022, but the Government has not yet indicated a possible date.
“My sense of the people is that right now, they are under stress from COVID. They are under stress from crime. They want their children back in school. Prices are going up. The last thing anybody wants to hear about now, with all of what is happening, is an election,” Holness said.
“And I think that, before we go to the people for politics again, we need to bring some of these issues under control and I personally need to be able to focus on these issues,” he continued.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has really taken up quite a bit of my time and I’m now shifting my focus back on to the other issues, which seemingly are getting out of control,” added Holness.
The prime minister said that the Government had thrown most of the country’s resources into battling the pandemic, while crime has got out of control.
“We have to get back a lid on crime. We have to get back the economy up and running. We have to bring inflation under control, though most of the inflation is imported, and the prices have to come back down,” said Holness.
He said that while the Government has an obligation to ensure that the electrons are held when they are due, it has “an overarching duty to ensure the public safety and the public good”.
However, Holness, the leader of the governing Jamaica Labour Party, also used the opportunity to instruct his councillors to continue working for the people.
“We have councillors here with us; they’re also wondering [if the elections will be held]. My message to them is, just go and do the work and serve the people. I don’t get the sense from the people that they are interested, there are other issues that they want to address and I’m refocusing on all those issues,” stated Holness.
Looking back to 2020, when the Government suspended the then SOEs to facilitate the general election, Holness said: “I had committed publicly that if there were to be an election at that time, that we would dispense with the SOEs, and it is for a good reason why I did it because for people who are in the political field, there is always a suspicion that the SOEs can be used in a political way.”
Former Police Commissioner Hardley Lewin has said that the latest round of SOEs seemed like a master strategy to shore up support for the governing party by laying a bait for the Opposition to oppose the security measures, creating a perception that the People’s National Party was not being supportive of the crime fight.