PNP files lawsuit to prevent Portmore becoming a parish – Golding

The Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) has followed through on its threat to take legal action to prevent the Government from pushing ahead with making Portmore Jamaica’s 15th parish.

Opposition Leader Mark Golding disclosed on Tuesday that the PNP has filed a suit in the Constitutional Court to strike down the legislation granting parish status to Portmore, the most populous residential community in the English-speaking Caribbean.

He made the disclosure during his contribution to the 2025/26 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives.  

The bill to make Portmore a parish has been approved by both houses of Parliament but cannot be enacted until it receives the Governor General’s assent and is gazzetted.

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Golding has urged Prime Minister Andrew Holness to “ensure that, as part of his legacy to Jamaica, this ill-conceived legislation is not brought into effect”. 

“We regard the pursuit of this legislation as a dangerous affront to our democracy which must be vigorously resisted by all lawful means at our disposal,” he added.

Golding noted that the current arrangements with respect to the governance of Portmore emerged out of a highly consultative and democratic process, led by the people of Portmore themselves. 

“We feel strongly that the people of Portmore must be the ones to decide whether they want to give up their status as a city municipality. After all, it enjoys some unique participatory governance innovations, such as a directly-elected mayor and the inclusion of community stakeholders in committees of their council,” Golding noted.

“A fundamental change like that should not be foisted onto them by the government of the day; and it must not be used as a backhanded device to adjust electoral boundaries to secure party political advantage. The approach being taken by this government to the establishment of Portmore as a parish is a dangerous incursion into long-settled processes for re-establishing electoral boundaries,” Golding argued.

He added that “the gerrymandering motives behind this initiative were publicly expressed by a former member of the Cabinet of this government, and have not been refuted. We argued strenuously and then voted against the legislation, primarily because the legislated boundaries for the new parish will necessitate the realignment of several constituency and divisional electoral boundaries, without the settled processes led by the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) having been engaged and in violation of the requirements of the Constitution,” said the Opposition leader.

He also pointed out that “profound concerns with this approach have also been raised by the present and a former Chairman of the ECJ, and by a former Director of Elections, who have made it clear that, if the implementation of the legislation is not halted it will result in a constitutional crisis”.

Golding told the Parliament that the Chairman of the PNP has written to the Minister with responsibility for local government, “in whose name the Bill was tabled and who piloted the legislation through this House, to seek certain assurances in this regard, but none has been forthcoming”. 

He pointed out that since 1980 Jamaica moved to establish an electoral system in which important decisions are vested in the ECJ with bipartisan representation, and the convention is that the decisions which result from the processes followed by the ECJ are implemented with bipartisan support.

“This institutional innovation has contributed greatly to the elimination of political violence in our country. It is very sad to see the government going down a path that will undermine this transformational national achievement,” he said.