JLP says it spent close to $40 million on Portland Eastern campaign
9:09 am, Tue May 28, 2019
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JLP General Secretary Dr. Horace Chang – file photo
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Dr. Horace Chang, speaking Monday with Beyond the Headlines host Dionne Jackson Miller
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has disclosed that it spent close to $40 million on the campaign of Ann-Marie Vaz for the Portland Eastern by-election last month.
There had been questions after the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) published information showing that Mrs Vaz had spent nothing on the campaign.
The JLP has now clarified that it was the party which did all the spending, not the candidate.
Speaking Monday on RJR’s Beyond the Headlines, JLP General Secretary Dr. Horace Chang said the party had indicated this to the ECJ along with the preliminary figures.
He said the official declaration will show expenses for advertisement, canvassing, polling – for which he said the party spent “three-to-four million dollars” – plus transportation and meetings.
“Putting up a stage for a major meeting at today’s costs – the kind of stage we use – is in the region of two-two-point-five million dollars,” he elaborated.
He said he expects the Electoral Commission of Jamaica to publish the figures in October, but added that it’s likely the final figure declared by the party will not capture the full amounts spent on the campaign in Portland Eastern.
As an example, he cited the case of elected officials who drove to the constituency and campaigned for the candidate, spending their own funds in the process.
Such expenditures are classified as “donations” and Dr. Chang conceded that such expenditures “may raise some issues because those are not things that we monitor closely.”
The by-election became necessary after the murder of the sitting member of parliament, Dr. Lynvale Bloomfield in February.
Dr. Chang said the party decided to take full control of financing Mrs Vaz’s campaign because “she did not (yet) have her own political account.”