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She’s back. Portia Simpson-Miller and the PNP score landslide win
Jamaica’s Prime Minister-designate., Portia Simpson-Miller
(Reuters) – Jamaica’s main opposition party rode a wave of discontent with a bad economy to a big win at the polls on Thursday, in elections that swept former Prime Minister Portia-Simpson Miller back into office.
Preliminary official results showed Simpson-Miller’s People’s National Party (PNP), winning 41 of the 63 parliamentary seats at stake in the national election.
The results gave the Jamaica Labor Party, or JLP, of Prime Minister Andrew Holness just 22 seats.
“The people of Jamaica have spoken,” Holness, 39, told reporters late on Thursday after calling the 66-year-old Simpson-Miller to concede defeat.
“I wish the new government well,” he said. “There are challenges that they will face, challenges that we are quite well aware of. And we hope for the benefit of the country and for the interest of the people of Jamaica that they will do a good job.
The center-right JLP is considered slightly more conservative than Simpson-Miller’s PNP, which narrowly lost a general election in 2007 after she briefly served as Jamaica’s first female Prime Minister.
But there are no major ideological differences between the parties, in a country once notorious for political bloodletting. Analysts have said neither party would have much room for maneuver in office as it deals with a huge debt burden and high unemployment.
