Landslide opposition election victory a surprise for winners

“We were very confident but the results certainly exceeded our most optimistic scenarios,” said Peter Phillips, a veteran lawmaker who led mobilization efforts for the opposition People's National Party (PNP).

During  the Dec. 29 election, voters threw out the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) after four years in power and delivered a landslide triumph to the main opposition whose campaign tapped voter disillusionment across the island.

Preliminary results gave former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller's PNP a dominating 42-21 seat advantage in the House of Representatives. A little more than half of the eligible 1.6 million voters cast ballots.

Prior to the election, the JLP held 32 seats in Parliament, compared to 28 held by the PNP.

With the island's biggest newspaper predicting a comfortable JLP win and most opinion polls putting the two clan-like parties in a virtual dead heat, the sizable margin was a stunning defeat for Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who led Jamaica for just two months.

In a sign that voters were chastening Holness' Labor party, they dumped some of his top Cabinet ministers, including National Security Minister Dwight Nelson and Energy Minister Clive Mullings, who lost their bids for re-election to Parliament.

Paying off the nation's punishing debt has long forced the government to scrimp on services and the electorate remains deeply divided.

Phillips said the PNP knew something was up about two weeks before the voting when the turnout of amped-up opposition supporters at campaign events grew in advance of the vote.

The Labor party chose Holness, 39, as prime minister in October when Bruce Golding resigned amid anemic public backing. Phillips said it was a shrewd move to switch leaders but the

strategy failed to give Labor much traction. And, despite promising otherwise, Holness failed to convince voters that he was an agent of change.

“What happened was that Holness was unable to persuade the electorate that the Labor party was a different party under him,” said Phillips, who noted that Holness nominated Golding's Cabinet as his own, with a few minor tweaks.

Holness displayed a serious-minded, preachy style on the campaign trail that appeared to alienate some of his party's supporters. Jamaican voters historically focus on personalities and blatant patronage has long been at the crux of politics.

Born to working-class parents in the impoverished city of Spanish Town, Holness regularly said he was an example of what Jamaica could hope to accomplish as a country. Such rhetoric apparently did little to inspire swing voters.

Public remarks by Labor officials suggested no hand-wringing over Holness' leadership after the election loss. He was gracious in defeat, wishing the PNP success for the sake of the country.

Simpson Miller has pledged to lift the debt-wracked nation out of poverty and create jobs but has offered few specifics. Some political analysts have said her party has been more focused on winning elections than effectively serving the population.

The PNP led the island nation for 18 years before its 2007 election loss and Holness argued during the campaign that the party mismanaged the economy, causing a steady devaluation of the currency and cutting deeply into the purchasing power of most wage-earners.

Phillips acknowledged Friday that there will be “no quick fixes” for Jamaica but he said Simpson Miller was committed to quickly extending a relationship with the International Monetary Fund and pushing job-creation and economic growth. He predicted a jobs program at the heart of the party's platform will bear fruit.

Jamaican economist Norman Girvan said the immediate challenge facing Simpson Miller's government will be boosting the country's chronically sputtering economy and re-establishing a pact with the IMF which, last year, approved a $1.27 billion loan to help the struggling economy.