The Government’s push to make Portmore Jamaica’s 15th parish took a major step forward on Friday as the Senate debated and passed the Counties and Parishes (Amendment) Act 2025 during a marathon debate lasting nearly six hours.
The bill, which was earlier passed in the House of Representatives on February 11, was on Friday piloted by Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Kamina Johnson Smith.
It was approved by the Upper House despite strong objections from Opposition senators led by Peter Bunting, the leader of Opposition business who warned that the bill was possibly unconstitutional.
At the end of the debate, all 10 Government senators voted yes while their four Opposition counterparts voted no.
During his contribution to the debate, Bunting stated the position of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) that the bill, if passed, would “immediately be unconstitutional.”
He pointed to a June, 2024 letter from the Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), Earl Jarrett to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development which warned that the proposed Portmore parish boundaries may negatively affect the boundaries of a constituency which is prohibited by the Second Schedule of the Constitution, Paragraph 2, Subsection 1.
The section states that “the boundary of a constituency shall not cross the boundary of a parish as delimited by the Counties and Parishes Act or by any law amending or replacing that law”.
Bunting pointed to a follow-up letter from Jarrett to the Clerk of the Houses of Parliament that was written on February 12, 2025, and which stated that the ECJ was aware that the Counties and Parishes Amendment Bill was passed in the House of Parliament a day earlier.
The follow-up letter pointed to the “probable breach that would occur should the bill be passed and brought into effect”.
According to the ECJ, the proposed boundary for the parish of Portmore would impact four constituencies, 13 electoral divisions and 398 polling divisions in St Catherine. It would eliminate sections of the Gregory Park and Portmore Pines divisions and all of polling divisions (PDs) 51, 53, 55 and 56 would no longer exist. PDs 1, 20, 49, 50, 52 and 54 would be splintered.
Bunting said the concerns raised by the ECJ prompted PNP Chairman Dr Angela Brown-Burke to write to Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie on February 21 to remind him of the constitutional provision regarding parish boundaries.
“Consequently, the bill, if passed into law and made operational will immediately be unconstitutional” Brown-Burke wrote while urging that the bill not be enacted even if it was approved by the Senate.
In their contributions to the debate Government senators Abka Fitz-Henley, Marlon Morgan and Delano Seiveright touted the benefits to Portmore residents if parish status was granted.
Morgan, in a marathon presentation, shared that he has lived in Portmore since he was 16-months-old and pointed to the developments that have taken place in the municipality over the four decades he has lived there.
However, Bunting was not convinced, arguing that parish status was in name only, a farce being perpetrated on Portmore’s residents. Bunting said he rose to make his contribution in “absolute and unrelenting opposition to this bill, this brazen, undemocratic and dangerous piece of legislation that seeks to undermine Jamaica’s hard earned democratic traditions”.
“This bill is not about progress, this bill is not about governance, this bill is not about the betterment of Portmore.
"This bill is a cynical, political manoeuvre designed to subvert democracy and manipulate the electoral boundaries for partisan gain,” he declared.
“This bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, dressed up in the language of development but fundamentally rotten at its core,” he said.
“At its heart it represents a blatant attempt by this Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government to gerrymander Jamaica’s electoral map, bypassing the Electoral Commission of Jamaica, an institution that has for decades been entrusted with the independent and non-partisan responsibility for setting constituency boundaries,” he added.
His Opposition colleagues Senators Damion Crawford and Lambert Brown also described the decision to grant parish status to Portmore as an attempt at gerrymandering by the JLP.
Brown warned that the bill could be repealed by a future PNP Government. He proposed an amendment to the bill that would see four communities – Lakes Pen, Grange Lane, Quarry Hill and Lime Tree Grove - which were cut from Portmore, added back to the municipality. These communities normally support the PNP and Bunting noted it would show the Government was not pushing a gerrymandered bill. The proposed amendment was rejected.
Bunting asserted that “if the people of Portmore were given the choice they would resoundingly reject this bill for the farce that it is, this is gerrymandering disguised as development”.
He said that by redrawing the boundaries of Portmore to create a new parish the Government was attempting to carve up constituencies particularly East Central St Catherine, deliberately altering the political balance of power to its advantage. He declared it to be nothing short of an attack on free and fair elections.
“The Opposition stands resolutely against this assault on our democratic norms. We will not stand by while this Government tramples on the will of the people, we will not be complicit in the destruction of our independent electoral system. We will fight this bill with every tool at our disposal,” Bunting warned.
He also argued that Portmore residents were crying out for better infrastructure and other amenities such as a courthouse, hospital, market and a cemetery.
Government members countered that all these were being addressed with health and wellness minister Dr Christopher Tufton announcing this week that lands have been identified for a hospital for Portmore. They also pointed to several housing developments underway and work being done on the multi-billion climate change park as well as upgrades to the road network. And they highlighted the Government’s vision of making Portmore the Silicon Valley of the Caribbean.
Johnson Smith also sought to allay fears that the constitution was being breached and stated that despite passage of the bill Portmore will not be immediately declared a parish.
“We’re quite clear that the authority of this Parliament is to make the law which declares the parish. The act comes into effect on an appointed day, there are matters that must take place after the parish is declared and that will include constituency boundaries but they’re not part of this declaration process,” said Johnson Smith.
“They’re a separate process, they’re part of a subsidiary process, they are a part of a reference in a schedule to the constitution and not a part of the constitutional power, the lawmaking power which this Parliament has,” she explained.
“So the Parliament will declare the parish and then the boundaries will be sorted using the normal mechanisms of the ECJ thereafter,” she added.
Continuing, she said “This is not rocket science, it is a process and you may have a view about the order in which things will be done but there are other views which say that unless the parish itself is declared and the boundaries are recognised then you cannot take the other actions that would be necessary”.
Bunting, who previously served as a commissioner of the ECJ said it would take at least one year for the ECJ to sort out the issues relating to boundaries, electoral divisions and polling divisions.
